Confidentiality and references

[Disneylover42]

We have been asked to provide our three references. One of my mum and the other two of our friends. The only thing is I’m worried about certain details I’ve given the social worker, I don’t want my two friends to find certain things out.

I’ve mentioned the fact we have a sex offender in the family, obviously my mum knows this but my friends don’t and I don’t want them to find out.

Our process so far has been amazing and we’re super positive about it. But if our references are going to find out about this ‘family secret’ then we won’t be able to go ahead.

Our references were, firstly, just sent a list of generic questions about what kinds of parents they thought we'd be, what kind of people are we etc.

Then they had a face to face / skype meeting to discuss it in more detail. How long they've known us, how they thought we'd deal with situations, what we're like as a couple etc.

None of the personal information we'd disclosed during our meetings was raised; although my best friend who was one of our references did mention some of it anyway which wasn't an issue.

I wouldn’t expect the sw to share any of your information with your referees.

I have adopted twice and been a referee twice and I really don't think that a SW would disclose anything about you. There was a generic list of questions and then follow up meeting or phone call. But during the meeting the questions were mostly related to what I had written or the SW impression of them, e.g. I had described them as playful and SW wanted more details on that. I had said that