to think social services should cut us some slack??

[PSCMUM]

we have 3 kids and both have abundant very detailed professional experience of adoption. We are going through the adoption process. There are lots of stages:

1. go to an information evening to find out about adoption - we went dutifulyl along, smiled and nodded and asked questions. it was utterly pointless for us, we could have run the information evening oursleves.
2. have a meeting with a social worker for them to find out about us - really useful, social worker lovely, asked all about us, and it was great, we felt really great. THey use the notes of this meeting to decided whether they will take us on or not, as adopters.
3. got the call saying they'd like to take us on - fantastic news, really delighted.
4. we have to go on a 4 day parenting and adoption course. its 4 days, its on week days on work days from 9-5. we have three children and both work full time. its just been the easter hols plus we have all been ill. it is SO hard to both have 4 days in a row off work at the moment. I don't know if anyone else struggles with the 4 weeks annual leave from work versus the 13 weeks school hols plus all the days off sick the kdis have etc, but we really do. So anyway, we played alnog and said yes fine, of course we';d love to come and find out about parenting and adoption, yes please. Anyway, due to one thinig and another, work related for both of us, we cannot do it. When I rang up to say how sorry I was, I got 'right, so you are not committed to adoption at the moment' Me - no, we are, its just so hard for us to have 4 days off work this week, immed after easter hols and immed after person I work v closely with has just gone on long term sick - husband could attend, but that is not enough, we must both attend or it is pointless. Me - could we maybe have the materials to study at home? Her - you could , but you still have to come and speak to parents and foster carers face to face. Chidlren can be challenging and you need to know what you are gettnig into.

literally, i want to start crying.

anyways, its not end of world, I am just ranting, we will have to go to their next waste of our time parenting course, it'll just slow down the process by a few months.

calm calm. end of rant. thank you for listengin.

But if they do for you, they will have to for everyone.

well why? Its a course to make people aware of the challenges of

1. parenting and 2) adoption

We are fully aware of both and have been for years, and are continuing to grow in our awareness due to being parents and due to the nature of our work. so I think it might be not controvertial to say that we have slightly more knowledge of both parenting and adoption than people who are not parents and have no experience of adoption!

YANBU

It should be organised in the evenings, and they should look at reducing the time that is takes to complete it. 4 days sounds excessive. No doubt people get paid a lot ot run those 4 day courses. It sounds like a cash cow to me.

o thank you millyR! you know when you just want someone to agree with you?! its now xx

Have you adopted before? My bro has adopted three times and had to go on the courses three times. I'm not sure a detailed professional knowledge of adoption is the same as having been through the emotional mill as an adopter, so you might get something out of the courses if this is your first time, even if it's only making contact with other adopters socially.

From my bro's experience, wanting to cry with frustration is pretty much the every day MO of the adoption process. Good luck and hope it all works out for you.

A four day course?! My friend and her DP have just adopted and they didn't have to do a 4 day course. Can you look into going with another agency or authority that's a bit more flexible? Having said that, they did have to go and do a playgroup thing every weekend for months on end and I can't imagine that'd be easy for you either.

you have my sympathies. I havebeen amazed at how lengthy, bureaucratic and uttlerly sould destroying the adoption process can be. All teh best of luck and keep your spirit up.

thank you, yes it is true re crying with frustration, lots of uor friends have done it and say similar things. Professional experience is not the same no, and there is always something to be got out of meeting other people, its just it feels like an added pressure that is uneccessary - maybe one afternoon sat in a room talking to other adopters would be fun, but I doubt we would get much from it in terms of helping us be better adoptive parents, given before we decided to do it we spoke toloads of adoptive parents, friends who are adopted, friends who are about to adopt, friends who have adopted overseas and domestically etc, so you know, i really feel like its a bit of an added bonus extra that shouldn't be compulsory or we can't progress... but apart from all of that, the main thing was her ' o right, so you are not focussed on the process at the moment' or whatebver she said. its so unfair. if i was a SAHM or we were zillionaires who didnt' need to work we could easily manage this, or even if we gacve the kids to a nanny when they were sick so we didn';t have so much time off work to look after them. but we aren;t weilling to do that. anyway, rant rant rant. god your poor brother - three times the same course, he must have wanted to fling himself out the window. the rules are so rigid, and you just have to smile sweetly as people with half a brain decide on the future of your family. i could scream. hats off to yuor brother that he survived doing it three times.

o yuo are all just so lovely and kind. thank you. It has taken us 6 months to find a local authority that will even INVITE us to one of their ground breaking iformation evenings, as we are white, and there is not much demand for white adopters in London, as many of the kids in need of adoption are not white, and if they are adopted by white people the roof will fall in and everyone will spontaneously combust. Or some other really sensible explanation for bl;ack children languishing in inadequate foster care for years, being passed from placement to placement, never making secure attachments to anyone, as the white people queueing up to adopt them are too white and so won't do. While the white kids taken into care are spirited out again at the speed of light as there are so many white adopters desperate to love a child.

Oh don't talk to me about that PCSMUM - makes me so cross! My friend is white and her partner is mixed race so they got a child super-quick. But his dad was from Barbados and their daughter's bio father is Nigerian so they're a similar colour but that's it. Why that makes them better parents than the next couple, I don't know. I'm not saying that I'm not absolutely delighted for them but this prioritisation of skin colour is ridiculous.

i know i'ts frustrating for you, but I think you are being unreasonable....

seriously, from their point of view if you can' spare 4 days to attend a course, how are you going to find the time to help the new child settle in?

Surely it will mean taking a break from work?

I thought people were entitled to paid adoption leave?

Hmm..

we started the fostering application process but stopped and put it on hold for a few years for family reasons, a few things you have said have made me think..

the SS attitude, it is frustrating having someone hlding your family's future in their hands, particularly if they have a superior attitude/less professional knowledge than you/ a lack of grasp of the english language (in my case)/a fondness of amateur pyschology or ridiculous questions. I feel your pain on that one.

The course does sound silly in that it is long and not very well placed, we went on a trining course one evening a week with buffet for evening meal so you could go straight from work.

Our local authority asks that the main carer does not work full time, as the children need more time and attention, you may have numerous appointments and meetings to attend regarding them, they need to feel someone is 'there', etc more than a child from a happy settled background does. Perhaps your LA is the same and this is why their course is on a weekday? It is silly though!

RE the course: it is not just for you to learn, it is also for others to guage you, your willingness to learn, or even being open to the idea you need to learn things, how you are with different characters and so on. But you know this yes?

Families ethnic background: This is SO important to a child! It is hard enough entering a family unit without them all being obviously different to you, not knowing your language, culture, food, music, etc. It is part of a child's identity and they may feel isolated, stripped of familiarity etc. I have spoken to foster carers who have cared for children from other cultures and put their heart and soul into making them feel welcome, even learning their language, they just yearn for their culuture around them and never settle.

SammyK - as far as I can see, adoption rules are not about culture, they are about skin colour. The little girl my friends adopted is half cornish and they were chosen over a cornish couple. They have nothing more culturally in common with her whatsoever than any other British couple. The only difference is that her new dad has a similar skin colour to her

MillyR - you do get adoption leave but that is only once the adoption has taken place, I don't think you get time off for adoption-related appointments.

Yes, spicemonster, that is what I meant (but didn't express very well). I was responding to the previous post about how OP would manage when she adopted; I presumed she'd manage fine once as she or her her partner could take adoption leave.

Sorry Milly - am very adept at getting totally wrong end of the stick!

Well in that particular case spicemonster that is silly! But I do think from the child's perspective and their settling into a family long term that it does need to be considered. It depends on the individual child, they may want them close to extended family and community or as far away as possible! I would say without knowing all the details who knows?!

It is up to your employers if they were to let you have the time off for adoption training I guess, but as it would be unpaid I am guessing in the OP's case it would be a no go as it would be for most working parents. They will annoying their employers and losing pay.

I can understand your frustration.

Don't shout at me - but can I ask - if you already have 3 kids and both work full time at demanding, and struggle already with the home/life balance - do you have time and space at present to adopt ? I would have thought that lots of time is a big thing you have to have when going through the first stages of adoption - time for the dust to settle and work out how everyone fits together.

Anyway - good luck with it.

yes cazboldy, we cannot spare time NOW to go on a 4 day course but once we actually ahve the child (if!) we will take adoption leave, we plan to take a year off between us, so that is plenty of time. We have time to create a loving home for a child and will give them absolutely everyhting they need.
And re the skin colour business - I agree if a black child can be adopted y a black couple that is fantastic. but there are not enough black adopters and so waht happens to a black child in care is that they just sit there, going form foster placement to foster placement, often with white adopters, having a not very nice time, while white people ask if they can adopt them and are told no, and no black people ask, as there are not so many balck adopters for whatever reason, and so the black child gets to 4 and 5 and 6 and gets more and mroe troubled, until eventually you have a child too old for anyone to want to adopt, and too troubled and unattached to anyone to have a normal life, leading to them benig twice as likely to be convicted of a crime and 7 times as likely to be expelled from school. When compared to how mixed race children do when raised by just one parent, so NOT by a person who is the same colour as them, they have none of these associated problems. So yes, if you can be the same colour as your adopted parents, lets break out the chmpagnem, but if its the choice between being loved by people a different colour to you, or being shunted around various different foster placements with the local authority as your 'parent' I know what I would choose for my kids.

ok so i laid on the moaning a bit too much in the OP - we don't struggle, life isn't one big uphill awfulness, its actually lovely, we both work full tiem in jobs we love that allow us the flexibility to attend plays, assemblies, doc appointments, kid off sick days, as well as go on lovely family holidays and come in late / leave early to pick the kids up frmo school - both of us have flexi work arrangements so the kids are taken to school by one or other of us 5 days a week and picked up by one or other of us 2 days a week. we place a very high priority on not being absentee career-y types, though also both having socially contributing jobs that engage our brains, we had the children to enjoy them, not to employ other people to look after them. But still time is precious, and there is not a lot of spare room in the schedule! and to spend 4 days sittnig in a room talking about stuff we already know about is really annoying to me. But I am willing to do it.. I would just like a bit of understanding when I say we can't do it right now, so that its not interpretted as lack of commitment to adoption or 'well if you cn't fit in 4 days, how are you going to fit in another child?' huffy puffyness.
I hadn?t heard that it was anything to do with them gauging us ? it has been presented as all about us learning, which is why, when I could run the course myself, it kind of grates slightly. But if it is part of them assessing us then I understand.

PSCMUM, just an idea - why not write to Social Services? Someone on the phone doesn't always listen or sympathise, and a letter they have to take more seriously, and it would be read by someone in higher authority than the person answering the phone. At least you would feel listened to?

also re working full time - thankfully our local authrotiy doesn't mind if the main carer works full time or not, they ask us to have a minimum of one year off with them, which we intended to do anyway, but then it is up to us how we organise our lives. And we will be responsive - if our child is really going to struggle in nursery, we'll not send them, of course we won't. But being something more than a mum is important to be, as being more than a dad is important to my husband - we both want careers and to be engaged in something other than domesticity. But if any of our children need that to change, it would.

o i'm just moaning - chocolate - thank yuo for the suggestion - it was the team leader I spoke to, the most senior person in the adoption team! But anyway, we have to go and that is that. If they even make people who have adopted twice before and attened the course twice before go for a third time, i think I just have to take a deep breath and practice my acting skills ' o how fascinting, adoption begins with 'a' and children sometimes don't sleep through the night, well that IS a revelation isn't it darling' it could perhaps be fun.

They are trying to teach their grandmother to suck eggs!

well i TRIED to tell them that basically we know everything and are just so amazing they should give us some triplets right now, but they just weren't having it! I know I probbaly sound like a right know all!!