Matching Panel - what questions were you asked?

[Smudgymoo]

Hi everyone
We have matching panel this week and just wondering what sorts of questions everybody was asked??

Feeling nervous now....!

Congratulations . The main things we were asked about was why we were interested in our particular children, what was about them that we thought was a good fit. The other major thing was our support systems, we live a long way from immediate family so they wanted to know what steps we had put in place to create support and what we do in an emergency etc

Hope it all goes well X

Congratulations! You will be fine, we found our matching panel a really nice experience.

The chair came to see is before we went in, explained the process and told us what questions were going to be covered, so that helped, not sure if they are all the same though?

We got asked: why these children? How do we feel about the uncertainties within adoption/how do we feel about possible issues not yet diagnosed such as FASD, autism etc. How we would promote identity, how would we deal with explaining their story to them. How do we feel about education (how would we ensure their needs were met etc.) Letterbox contact was asked about and how we felt about that. How would we ensure each other were ok, and what we may each do to get some time out. They seemed to really like us saying that if we ever felt out of our depth, we dis not see it as a failure to ask for expert help. One thing I wasn't expecting though was at the end of panel each member expressed whether they approved or not of the match. I thought we would be sent out of the room for them to discuss.

We went for a lovely pub lunch afterwards to celebrate. Good luck and enjoy it!

Hi Smudgymoo like Giddy said, we were met by the Chair who said what they'd liked about the match and most importantly, gave us a list of questions the panel had.

We were went through the questions with all the SWs and the Family Finder beforehand.

For those about to go through (and for those who search for this later through research) it should be a re-affirmation of all you've talked through and the panel is asking for amplification of what's in the reports etc. We were worried beforehand but getting in the panel and talking it through felt less like a weird interview and more like a conversation with strangers in the pub.

Wishing you all a good experience