Panel refused to hear us?! help

[AdoptionWoes]

I am just in such a spin at the moment and wanted to reach out and see if any other adopters have gone through this before, as our SW has said she has never had this happen and it seems rare from her perspective but hearing from others might make us feel less awful.

This coming Friday we were due to go to panel, we found out yesterday that after reading through our PAR they are refusing to hear us at panel due to several 'concerns' which is confusing since we had a lot of eyes on our PAR, a second opinion and even the head of the LA's adoption services looked over it and said it was ready.

On the one hand, I agree with our SW who said to be honest this is better than turning up and getting a deferral or a split panel, but it's just so confusing, we are getting so little information from the LA who has said it could be weeks until we know what these mystery concerns are. What's worse is we had been provisionally lined up an EP match, spoken to the family finder etc. and it was all due to go ahead after panel which now isn't going to happen. Our SW's manager has said although she doesn't know what the concerns are, as there are many she can't see us being back at panel for another 3 months! so this EP placement is definitely out since the baby is due in 4 weeks :(

So I am just wondering if anyone else has gone through this and could offer some advice or guidance on what the process is? or if any social workers are on here is this normal?

It happened to the day before matching panel.

Our first social worker just didn’t click with DH and he found it difficult to open up to her. So although all the “stuff” in the PAR was fine the tone was negative.

The new social worker said that she was amazed when she met DH as she was expecting someone completely different from reading the PAR. After panel knocked us back she sat and rewrote the PAR based on her experience of us, and it sailed through.

We went back to matching panel 4 months later for the same match and we have had our DS for 2 1/2 years now.

This happened to me. The day before my second opinion interview I had a call from the permanency manager to say that my SW hadn’t followed the assessment criteria properly. My entire PAR had to be re-written and it took 8 months to get the necessary work completed.
I did have a change of social worker, her manager took over as she had made such an appallingly bad mess of things.
BUT I got there in the end, and was subsequently matched with a child who I could not imagine never having in my life.
I really hope things progress smoothly for you.

I'm sorry you're feeling so shitty AdoptionWoes, it's hardly surprising though.

Reading what your colleagues did brought a tear to my eyes. That pain of childlessness is one that can supersede all others and was one that I never, ever, thought I would be free of. But I happily celebrated my fifth Mother's Day this year and whilst I'll never forget how that pain felt, I'm happy to report that it is relegated to my past, and soon it will be for you too.

I second what RestingPandaFace and ButtonMoonLoon have said...basically, as shitty as it gets, and how ever many times you feel like giving up, don't. You may have times where you feel broken but you must dig deep and continue. My experience the first time was far from good, but if any single second of it had been different then I may have ended up matched with a completely different child and I can't even bear to think about that; so even though there's no excusing the poor practice you and many of us have been subjected to, you will get there.

I really hope that having the supervisor present is helpful and commend you for being able to continue to work with this SW, it must be so difficult.

Let us know how you get on, and good luck. G xx

A friend of mine turned up to panel and they wouldn't let them into the room as the panel was so bad.
It had clearly been copied and pasted in some areas as it had the wrong names!