What obstacles did you face when adopting with your own birth child? (fed up)

[JoDeeMagi]

We have DS (8.9) and are well on the way with adoption process, had been hoping to go to panel in Nov.

DS has had difficulties in school, with attention, literacy; been seen by ed psych and Paed. Opinion of the Paed. was that he is bright but dyslexic. I have had trouble with the SENCO in the school accepting this. DS had a difficult year in Y3 adjusting with the move from Infants to Juniors.

He now seems settled in Y4, happy with teacher, he had been going to a nuture group in Y3 but doesn't need to any more.

Adoption agency wanted some idea from school of 'where ds was at' before they would proceed to Panel.

I don't know exactly what the school have said to adoption agency (I will go and find out in Jan) but social worker came to see us last week and said they wanted to put everything 'on hold' for a year until DS was 'sorted' at school.

Now they have made this judgment with just the Paed. report and whatever the school have said, and our point to SW was that no-one has even come and met with DS (which they were going to do in the summer).

SW went away and said she would speak to supervisor, but we were quite unhappy - DS is a normal child with a delay in literacy/short attention span.

I'm sorry to read about your situation, its must be frustrating. Are you saying that you want the SW to coem and meet with your son before making this decision? My guess ( gut feeling) woudl be that it wont change their minds and as a parent i would be worried that my son would somehow feel that he had " failed"

sadly Sw are notorious for making snap judgements then failing to alter their opinion in teh face of teh facts

Hi Kristingle - the SW had said at the beginning of the summer that they had another SW (male) who was 'very good with kids' who would come and meet with DS, see what he thought about another child living in his house, sharing toys, etc (in a very casual, easy-going way).

This hasn't happened, agency has been very busy over the summer and our own SW Home Study visits were few and far between, so I knew we wouldn't make our Nov target for Panel.

IKWYM about your gut feeling, we said to the SW we didn't want this to be a pointless exercise if your (superior's) mind was made up; she said not - the SW good with kids would have to come a long distance and wouldn't do it just for the sake of it, so we will have to see. (we haven't been making a big deal of the adoption process with DS, we don't mention it at all (sometimes he will ask about it, but rarely) as it's been such a long road, we don't build his hopes up)

so if this Sw who is " good with kids" meets your son and "approves" of him, they will take you forward to panel now? Well by " now" i would guess that would be next Spring sometime, as they still would have to write up the report, get it signed off by the senior and book a panel date.....

I hope that IS the case and they are not just stringing you along

I am not very up to date with procedures, but I don't think you can appeal if they don't take you to panel, whereas if they take you and you are turned down you have grounds for appeal

what age of child/children are you looking for?

We hope we won't be strung along, either.

SW sent an sort of explanatory email saying a placement where there is already a birth child has a much higher risk of failure (like we weren't already aware of that) and there was a case where this had happened where SWs hadn't built up a compete picture from professionals (not just from the school) of the birth child.

We are looking for a girl, aged 2-5, btw.

SW will be in touch in the NY, will let you know the outcome.

thanks for replying, I'm, trying to keep a cheery

good luck!