House changes Stage 2

[madeyemoody]

First week into stage two with first SW meeting on Friday, we have a different SW than stage one. Never met him before.

We had our SW around twice during S1 and they did the "safety check" to make sure the house was by all appearances safe and livable for a child. feedback was great, a lot of room, nice bright modern interior (we have just redecorated) and a big garden. From a quick scan of our house it's fine, lovely in fact! But if you look closely you'll see that all of our upstair doors are broken in some way. The handles don't latch properly or they drag on the carpet, All our windows are old and don't lock properly, they also don't have safety mechanisms to stop the window being pushed out too far. There are power cables everywhere and power boards in most rooms because it's an 1950's build with only one power point in each room. The bottom of our garden is over run with ivy and bramble and there is an old shed rotting, full of junk at the bottom there too.

My partner and I are at loggerheads. I am convinced that these things will pop up in Stage 2 as safety concerns and prevent us from moving forward towards the end, the more frequently the SW is at ours the more he will notice all of the above. My partner is convinced they would have already told us if we needed to change things in the house before saying we are in stage 2 as we need to be ready for panel in 12 weeks starting from this week.

What has been your experience? Has the house been approved already or is it something that the SW will comment more on moving forward throughout the assessment?

Our house is old and lots of potential safety things, certainly a messy garden but this was fine.you can buy easily attachable window locker cables off Amazon very cheap,which we have so I'd do the things like that that you can sort easy but wouldn't worry about the door handles.good luck!

@tonyhawks23 thankyou that's put my mind at ease, All of our house "issues" are on a list to be done, but like everyone, it's so expensive right now and whilst we have savings, we are trying to maintain them as they are during the assessment process as I know there is a lot of focus right now on financial situations for prospective adopters (feedback from our intake group of adopters).

Yes for us we didnt have a toddler safe house at the start - we didnt know age or anything even in fact - so imagine its just an ongoing thing - we didnt actually put stair gates in for example until we were matched. I think having the awareness that there are things you will need to change to make the house more child friendly is a good place to be in.

The social worker you have for stage 2 will be the one who writes your PAR, which goes to panel. So I think it's likely they will want to look at your house and be happy with it. So it may be that your social worker will want some things dealing with (power cables and windows). However there will be some things that you'll agree need doing, but won't do until matching.

@madeyemoody

no one has a perfect house, or starts off with a child proof home.
To be honest, nothing you have listed isnt fixable with a bit of DIY and a few afternoons hard work.
Yes rewiring and putting in extra sockets is expensive ( I’ve just had some done so I know) but there ways of tidying up cables.
Surely in a few afternoons you could cut back the garden and clear the junk out and take it to the tip. Although I had a rotting shed on my allotment last year, I paid someone to demolish and take it and some junk away. It cost £120. It was worth it, done in an afternoon.

I’d just work through the list, one thing a month, if you don’t do it now, you’ll find it harder when there is a child about.

Thanks Ted, yeah a few weekends of DIY is in order that's for sure. By the sounds of it though, none of these things will prevent us from being ready for panel so fingers crossed we can just get them ticked off the list before matching