Forgive me,  it's been about 9 months since my last update of this blog

It's difficult to keep a blog going when it's about something like this when there are such long periods of nothing happening. Then you're so happy when something does happen you're buzzing too much to update

So, quick update. We had our approval panel back at the end of July which we got through. This was followed by the highs and lows of trying to get a match. A couple of aborted suggestions, largely through questionable decision-making from social services. These were a 3 year old boy and a little girl who was 2, both of whom were lovely little kids (from the information we had, at least). An older boy of 4 was suggested but he turned out to be apparently unsuitable for various reasons, though we didn't end up seeing any real details on him. It was during this time we decided we'd prefer a child at the ounger end of our range, 2.5 to 5, and another little boy was suggested as a possible match who was actually not even two.I know it's difficult to not be swayed by the picture on the report, but he is the cutest little thing. We talked about him between ourselves and decided he would actually be a great match so went ahead with the process to adopt him. We got through matching panel for him so we had a lot of work to do round the house to make the place suitable for a toddler. To be honest, that wasn't radically different to what we needed for a kid a year or so older.

And that was the next part: progression towards matching with this new Paddington.

Still chugging along

We're still in the process. Social worker visits were going well, then we hit a snag as our social worker was taken seriously ill on the day we were expecting another visit. Obviously we're concerned about her since we got on very well and had built up a very good working relationship with her, but it's also set us back a few weeks. This came after we had been shown the details of a child who's on the books of the local authority. It may have been too early in our process, but we were immediately smitten by this kid. The details had a picture of a really happy, pleasant looking boy. The life story didn't hold any obvious problems from our point of view, though there were possible allusion to some issues so we requested the full report. We also asked if we could see the details of another boy on the local list who also matched our (for want of a better term) requirements. This was just so we could get an idea of what might be said and, more importantly, what might be omitted and let us read between the lines. This was a useful thing to do since we saw immediately why he wasn't a suitable chld for us and we certainly didn't get the instant affinity for him that we did with the first one.

The full report on the boy we first saw the details on makes for horrendous reading. Not so much for this boy(though at his young age he has seen and exerienced far more trauma than he should have), but his parents' stories also show that these things are clearly a cycle that goes round every generation and that by going to adopt a child we might be able to make a difference and actually stop it happening again to that little person and give them a real chance in life
A couple of weeks later we resumed with a new social worker. We had been progressing nicely and had covered a lot of ground in the homework we had to do, but she still insisted on going over the same stuff again.

We heard that we originally would have had our panel date some time in June (this is the date when you go before a group of people who decide that you are suitable to be adoptive parents) but this is now towards the end of July so adding between 4 and 6 weeks. We don't know at the moment where we stand with the child we were shown the details of earlier on, whether the delay we're having means socil servies will be loking elsehwhere for a family for him, but we live in hope. If we don't get matched with him, sad to say, there is no shortage of children waiting for their "forever mummy and daddy" in the local area or further afield