Break between stages

[NickD87]

We recently passed our stage one (late November). It’s been full of delays!

We have now been allocated a social worker and have our meeting to discuss stage 2 plans in January.

My other half wants to take the full six months break in between. The process has been delayed that he feels we sort of need time to ‘recalibrate’ and take the time to prepare ourselves.

There is no rush, but I wonder whether this six month break might make us look disengaged to the LA. Especially as the whole process has already been delayed.

We are in a WhatsApp with other potential adopters from the LA and they have also been very delayed, with people saying that it feels like something going on ‘in the background’ rather than a full on process - and I suppose a break gives us the opportunity to ‘gee ourselves up’ and get more reading done etc until home visits start.

Has anybody taken the break? And do you think it will be held as a mark against our commitment?

In our experience - it will be no different in six months. The process, from start to finish, is always plagued by delays and changes and timescales and communication issues etc.

And that's through no fault of anybodies - it's just sadly how it goes due to changes in staffing, fluctuating situations within the care system, COVID , numbers of adopters in process etc.

By all means take some time to relax and take deep breaths etc. just be prepared that all taking that six months will really do is delay you further only to be left in the same position again then.

Our stage one and stage two went very "by the book" and was all done within the six month guidelines etc. Even with that, we still found that it all just felt like an "in the background" thing. And after approval, during the matching process - it's definitely even more in the background - as you can go weeks without hearing a peep - either because there's no updates, or because your social worker is on annual leave, or because they are waiting for responses from others about matches and don't want to inform you prematurely etc.
It can be maddening, I found that I was thinking about it constantly and worrying we had been forgotten or overlooked (of course this wasn't the case).

We did take a break ourselves, but after our stage two was completed during the matching process, and while our social worker agreed with it - when we did then get our match it was questioned and discussed and so did play a part in our story.

We took a few shorter breaks during the process - twice to think everything through thoroughly, once as the pandemic had been hard for our BC and we wanted them to be settled at school before linking.

At panels, it was certainly mentioned as a positive thing, i.e. us being aware of what we were/weren't able to do and being realistic.

However, we felt all it did was delay things even more. E.g., we took a couple of breaks to think things through and make sure we definitely wanted to go ahead - only to be told a couple of weeks later that now there would be a break to give us the chance to do exactly that type of thinking, with no allowance made for the fact that we had just done that - so, a voluntary break asked for by us was followed by a mandatory break as part of the process. If I were you, I'd ask for clarification of the process going forward before taking a break.

We didn't take a break, though circumstances created some delays (I had some health problems during the approval process).

I just wanted to say though that I felt exactly as you did at the end of stage 1. I felt like it had taken so long to get through that I'd forgotten what the point was. I found stage 2 much better from that perspective.

All I would bare in mind is the matching process can be LONG, especially if you are looking younger, single child, no significant health issues.

Its a completely different reason for us but we delayed registering interest for 9 months after we had an unexpected pregnancy and loss. I found the waiting after approval quite hard and often wished that pregnancy never happened so it wouldn't have took so long, but here we are matched with the most amazing kids. Everything happens for a reason but just keep that additional wait at the other end in mind too!