Matching

[Brendaloves]

Hi

im looking to hear other peoples experiences post panel and in matching.

we where approved around three months ago and felt lucky to be matched prior to panel to an EPP case who was a new born. We were actually informed and matched before birth but due to birth being early and falling a few days before panel and ratification needing to take place at agency, baby was discharged into another foster placement. Lots happened, link meeting paperwork, other bits regards Birth family which I won’t go into and six weeks later ADM concluded the case was no longer suited to EPP.

Our SW changed at this point and quickly a call followed from them around another little person but I’m not sure how we where considered a match as our PAR made very clear that we couldn't consider a specific element that the case contained. Clearly the new SW hadn’t read our PAR when we were handed over to them.

we now seem to be in this limbo with this new SW where we register interest in children on link maker or they email us, which is usually Thursday before they finish for the week to put forward cases - always with extremely limited information which we dually consider and put out question back to them. By the time they return to work the following Tuesday, I assume they then work through what we have asked and they get our responses in. By then it’s Wednesday or Thursday. The theme seems to be we don’t have the question we asked answered directly, always skirting around the answer, so have to go back (I.e one case mum was described as having mild learning difficulties and reason she couldn’t care for child, but they couldn’t answer what she had been diagnosed with having even though assessment where complete for the court case. mum known to services in assisted living etc so not described as mild in my opinion) or the most famous one seems to be child has been matched. This has happened four times now, we also have another profile which we saw and very keen on, three weeks on we are waiting for child’s social worker to read our PAR (apparently- feels more likely he has a match and there keeping us warm).

we feel absolutely exhausted and emotionally drained. It feels like where in a que and being thrown cases to look at for practise or maybe our fault is we have to accept a case with limited info as clearly asking questions is getting us know where.

I've waffled on a little now so keen to hear:

• did others find obtaining information drawn out and long or could this be our SW. with our previous match our SW(who has changed) and the FF where always super responsive to emails and happy to have calls
• what etiquette did you employ with linkmaker I.e did you use the show interest or did you refer profiles to your SW (which is how we have approached)
• practically how did you manage this time, it’s hard not to constantly be checking emails and the phone. I never expected it to be like this but think we are jaded as we had a match and then when it fell apart there was a surge in emails and calls about possible cases. Appreciate this could take years although it clearly felt like initial it was going to take weeks/months once we became new meat
• did you sign family finding agreements. In each of our other stages we signed an agreement which clearly set out what to expect

Matching is very hard, partly because you’re in limbo and partly because there are a lot of moving pieces to coordinate. There are often things going on in the background (legal processes, placement breakdowns, birth family crisis etc) that they can’t tell you about but means delays throughout. Add in changes in staffing, holidays, sickness, individual work patterns and things can feel very slow and deeply frustrating.

I found profiles on Linkmaker very hit or miss in terms of useful information and social workers are very limited in for information they can give you until there’s a clear intention towards matching (as opposed to gaining information to inform your decision about whether this child might be a match).

The best advice I can give is for you to live your life, as much as possible. Book holidays, enjoy your child free time and try not to fret, because things can move very quickly once the matching process starts with a particular child.

hi Op didn’t want to read and run. We started our adoption process in August 2021, we were finally approved in November 2022 and started matching. We also found this process very frustrating and emotionally draining. We spoke to our FF and SW and they agreed we could express an interest in children directly and they would get involved if we wanted a discussion or if things moved forwards.

To give you some context we expressed an interest in 40 children before we found out match and had varying degrees of interaction from the SW/LA’s involved.

Sometimes a straight up “no we’ve already got enough potential adopters to look through” or “no we have stronger matches” or after weeks of waiting “we’re no longer looking for this child” then they disappear from linkmaker”

Come to July 2023 we expressed an interest in a child and immediately had a response asking us to read the CPR and if we were still interested they would review our PAR. This was the opposite way round to most others and made more sense as we have more time on our hands.

Things moved quickly after that and we were shortlisted down to us and 2 other sets of adopters. They then confirmed they had chosen us to pursue and wanted to do a home visit. We later found out we had been shortlisted from 20 potential adopters.

We were officially linked in September 2023, had our matching panel in November 2023 and our daughter moved in with us in February 2024.

In short; I would say what you are experiencing is very common; we became quite pushy and we had some template expressions of interest that we tweaked each time dependent on the child. But in all honesty when you know you know and we did with our daughter. Especially when we met her FF and SW, we all just clicked and it has gone really well since move in.

Be patient and another tip was we stopped scrolling on linkmaker and only looked when we had an alert for our search criteria, this helped. We also became strict about saying no if something wasn’t right, especially when we were approached first.

Be kind to yourselves and persevere! You will get there, feel free to DM me if you want more of a chat. Best wishes xx

Thanks all.

What did you all do around holidays etc- just book them as normal? We’re worried when it does happen it will all move fast and darnt plan too far in advance.

We didn't do linkmaker, so I can't advisement however, when things get overwhelming, someone once told me ro do emails like you do laundry- at a set time and in batches. You dont wash one item at a time, you do a load together. It really helps me to know i dont need to respond immediately.

With holidays we kept them cheap and cheerful, and insured with the idea that we would be delighted to cancel if it meant getting out LO home even two months earlier. We figured we would pay the price of a holiday to be placed sooner. We stuck to last minute deals and tried to go to places that we hadn't been to before and doing grown up stuff like fancy meals out and sunbathing on the beach whilst dozing.

We also had to manage our expectations about emails and matches. We were used to things moving quite quickly in our own professional roles, but it felt like SW were dragging their feet and taking weeks to reply if at all. We were politely persistent, but we allocated ourselves one roundup chasing email to our social worker per week- Sundays we would review where we were with each expression of interest, then on Monday morning without fail we would message her and ask for her to chase or to decline, or let her know that we had completed whatever other tasks were required. It helped us to keep ourselves limited but also made sure that we didn't slip too far down the priority list. We have a policy of being "aggressively present" that seemed to work. Not demanding, not rude, just.... there. It works quite well for many other institutions as well, come to think of it!

I would also emotionally prepare yourself for summer. We met our kids in late spring, and were eager to get the process rolling but social worker after social worker went on holiday, and each of them were a blockage- nothing could proceed whilst their social worker was away, then our social worker went away for 3 weeks to South america and her manager was only dealing with urgent safeguarding issues, not home visits etc- it was genuinely infuriating knowing that our kids were sat there in foster care when they could have been with us three months earlier if only they had managed to get stuff going a few weeks earlier. We therefore didn’t get to panel until october, and didn’t get to intros until november. Knowing that can be very difficult to move on from, and the repercussions last for a long time. It meant that our eldest moved in very close to Christmas and our youngest moved in a few months later close to his birthday. That whole time frame could have been completed earlier away from Christmas had it not been for the unfortunate timing of all the staff holidays. Maybe it was naieve of us to think that someone else from the team might have been allocated some of their tasks (especially over 3 weeks!) But there you go. We were naieve generally I think!

Anyway. My advice is to book the holiday. There were many long dark nights of the soul holding a weeping toddler at midnight that were eased a little bit by the recent memory of red wine on a warm Sicilian evening accompanied by a good book and some beautiful sunsets. Plus, the residual tan meant that the bags under my eyes were marginally less noticeable. You don't know when or if you will get to go again either, or be able to do those things in the same way. We recently went abroad for the first time with the kids but spent it basically doing what we did at home (swimming, soft play. Themeparks) only in Danish. They even watched Waffle the wonder dog in Danish (and didn't notice for about 3 episodes that they didn't understand the language!) It was a long way from pleasant evenings spent wandering along a boulevarde debating what we fancied for dinner and where we should go for wine afterwards!

this period is really hard, our first match fell through 48 hours before intros began. That was a horrible horrible feeling. Then after our son was placed, we found out the special guardianship of the first child fell through and he was again placed for adoption with another family.

BUT we now have 2 children who we are best for
I’m not saying it’s easy, at all. But I’m confident that we are the right parents for them, and more than that they are exactly right for each other and us
but it took time, and the hardest time both times was finding the match, first time round the match was quick but fell through, then our son was matched and that was the intros from hell, then it was a lot of time and nos before we were matched with our daughter