Panel

[Mollybird1]

Hi.Love reading all your posts. First time posting on here. We have a 6year old BC, and just completed stage 2. We are off to panel this Thursday!!... Whilst Husband's pretty chilled about it, I'm rather nervous!! Would love to hear how any of you that have been approved got on. How did you find it. I'm so scared of my mind going blank and not answering a question correctly!!

Good luck
I was a bag of nerves for panel but honestly it was fine. They were all lovely, asked us 3 questons which were pretty generic and gave us a yes more a less immediately after.

We also have panel this week and SW has just emailed us a list of "possible questions" which reads something like
-anything about your past
-anything about attachment
-anything about your exes
-anything about anything

So not particularly enlightening (!) but at I'm hanging onto the fact that we probably will have talked about whatever it is with SW before, and can hopefully pull together a coherent answer for panel like we obviously did for SW! ... but panel feels very different from your living room with a cup of tea, doesn't it?!

I feel a bit like I ought to swot up on attachment stuff like I did before stg 2 training .. maybe some bedtime reading tonight and tomorrow. mollybird wishing you loads of luck for thursday, fingers all crossed!

Ah thanks for your help and advice ladies. Good luck to you too arielmanto ! We have our sw popping in wed morning just to go over things. Let me know how you get on! I'll let you know how it goes for me too. Thursday can't come soon enough now, just want it over with! Xx

The questions we got asked were;

1. What sort of child do you think would fit into your family.
2. How do you think your life would change with a child.
3. What part of the training do you feel that you got the most from.

Hope that may help you a little bit :) xx

I was terrified before ours too but it was fine, they were all really nice and remember you have your social worker there with you to give you prompts or back you up. It's scary because it's unknown what it's going to be like but it really is ok and I felt that they really just wanted to put real faces to the people they have read about. They already know which way it's going to go before you get in there.

God, I remember mine.

Our approval process had gone far from smoothly. (It took 19 months from initial enquiry to approval) I was not expecting an easy time at panel.

I woke up at 3 am the morning of, and didn't get back to sleep.

I work in a high pressure environment. My day to day contacts are 'heads of', directors and the CFO of a FTSE250 company. I regularly give presentations in front of 500+ people. I have never felt so nervous as I did going in front of an adoption panel!!

They were absolutely, utterly lovely. They asked:

How have we found the process (that took some tact and our agency thanked us for not totally screwing them over in our answer. We really could have done)

How we were settling into our new house.

What we were most looking forward to about being parents.

Why siblings (we wanted to be approved for two)

That was it.

It was an enjoyable experience.

Pressed 'post' too quickly.

Of course you're going to be nervous. But remember that something like 97% of couple who get as far as panel get approved. Of the remaining 3%, the vast majority are 'referred', ie the panel just wants more info on them.

VERY few are rejected.

Good luck. Let us know how you got on.

Very best wishes for tomorrow - and remember, they need you as much as you need them. At least that's what the chair of the panel said to us when she popped in to see us just before we went in! It's an opportunity for the panel to have a chat with you and put faces to the paper profile. It'll be over before you know it :)

I typed a long message and my phone died. Agh!
We were unanimously approved this morning - 7 panel members with a question each! Made me go beetroot red (with nerves rather than embarrassment) but we answered them all. Most questions very general - why adoption, why now? Which we felt was kind!
Good luck for tomorrow mollybird let us know x

Arielmanto congratulations and good luck tomorrow mollybird

Good luck tomorrow! I won't tell you not to worry because it is IMPOSSIBLE not to!! I was asked what my job actually was (they didn't understand my job title), how I found the process, what was I doing to loose weight and how would that continue when I became a mummy.

Just remember they won't ask anything you don't know the answer to, all the questions will be about you

Good luck!

You have been given some great advice. The only thing I could add is this. The panel asked my DH most of the questions, he answered them very well on most parts. When I found he was struggling, I helped by interjecting.

We were approved and the thing that impressed them most was that we supported one another when one of us was having difficulties.

I meant having difficulties in the panel cross examination questions.

Thanks everyone for your advice, really helpful and has put my mind at ease a little. Was awake very early this morning and now have butterflies in my tummy!!! I'll let you know how it goes!! Thank you all so much!!

Congratulations arielmanto!! We've just been approved too! Also an unanimously vote. Actually didn't find it too bad at all. Often the build up to these things are a lot worse than the actual event. We were mainly asked about our bc and how she would react to a new sibling, what sort of child is she etc..
Thankyou all for your help and advice, it really did help. X

Oh fabulous! Well done molly that's great, hope you have a slice of and celebrate this evening.

Ahh brilliant :) well done!

Yay congrats!!

Congratulations