On waiting and moving forward
More rejections came over the following weeks, again twice getting down to a final 3. We took some comfort in the fact that we are good enough for serious discussion and we know that profiles are hugely popular. Ultimately, coming 2nd or 3rd is no better than coming 20th as the outcome is the same but there is some comfort in knowing you almost won.
It would be nice if it was a case of 'try harder' next time, but there is no option to 'try' anymore as we are not directly involved in this early decision making and cannot really influence it. We always reply promptly and have our details sent promptly and our social worker chases profiles for us if we have heard nothing. Everything is being done for us and we are very grateful for such excellent representation.
We like to think we are becoming harder and try to not be overly hopeful with any profile and have learnt the next step- receiving child profiles- can also mean absolutely nothing with regards to outcome. One strange thing about the rejections is very often the social workers of the children do not close down your link, it is left live even though you have been told that they are pursuing someone else. We have the option to close these links down but we don't as personally it feels like severing chances- what if it doesn't work out and we took ourselves out of the race? So we don't and to be honest, it makes your profile attractive, if you have 4/5 open links you look popular, more in demand. I asked this question to the admin team of Link Maker and was told exactly this. So we leave them open until the social worker closes them- we don't want to be the ones to turn children down.
We had a few weeks in limbo where not a lot happened and then something happened that we didn't expect- a social worker contacted us about a profile.
We didn't expect this as we were no longer newbies on the site and our profile wouldn't have shown up as newly added. More unexpectedly, the children were 'popular' looking, insomuch as they ere young, seemingly uncomplicated (as much as children in care can be considered as such- never diminish the harm neglect and not meeting a child's needs can affect a child for life). We also recognised the profiles. We had seen them in the very early days, I remember turning my laptop to Karl and talking about them and not enquiring at the time as we were unsure how many to apply for and unsure we could cope with two boys. I the early days we were applying for more single children than siblings. I remember being very torn at the time. They had then disappeared from the site so they were no longer an option and when this happens you assume they have found a family- there were also links already on them and that can make you think 'what's the point?' as several other families are already officially in the running for top spot.
On looking at the profile sent to us, there were 9 open links on them. It was very confusing why they would want us as a 10th link. We accepted the invite to link with a sense of confusion. I questioned our social worker about it to find out about it and to send our PAR on.
It turns out they already had our PAR as another social worker at the adoption agency had sent it to them already. It was them who made the link and discussed us prior to us receiving the request. i was aware that our profile was sent out to potential matches that we didn't know about as our social worker had said that there was no reason to tell us about all the social workers they sent our details to unless they turned into a link. This makes complete sense. I knew it was happening but hadn't heard anything from them about anything ever occurring from their background work. The question was still there as to why they were interested in us when this was an 'old' profile as we remembered it from February and they had other links already. When we went to pick up the profiles we found out that they had been looking into a family and it had fallen through- no details as to why. This still didn't answer why there were 9 other links (potentially 8 of them were others they had already read profiles for- or at least asked for them). I can't say that we felt particularly hopeful here as we couldn't understand why they wanted to look at us when there were others they had live.
One step further was taken on this and the medicals were sent to our social worker. this is a step we hadn't got to before.
Over the weekend, Karl's mum, my mum and Karl's sister all attended an information day about supporting us in adoption and what to expect when we had a child/ children. They felt a little left out as they seemed the only family where children hadn't already been placed. They had lots of questions for us and talking about how two couples on the same panel date as us had a match. My mum, not the most sensitive of people at times! This made me at least feel like a failure, like there was something wrong with us but then we had to keep reminding ourselves we had a couple of profiles we turned down- maybe those children would have gone forward and we would have also been matched, done visiting and be at the point of having them in the home. It was just luck that these couples had a child/ children very early. We know we did the right thing to turn down some previous profiles; they were wrong for us and us for them. We always said that we would be picky for the first 6 months. As it turns out, seeing forum posts, we are not that picky at all- some have made mention of things like 'we want a a 3 year old girl', 'we want a 0-3 child'. With our range of 0-6, 1 or 2 children ,boy or girl- it turns out we are pretty flexible in our options at the moment. I have been shocked how little some seem to 'live in the real world' with regards to finding a child/ children.
The Monday after this, I was contacted to say that the children's social worker wanted to visit us as a potential match and that currently we were the only family they were considering!
It has been a very long 3 weeks preparing for that visit... and we are soundly shattered with the amount of work we have done in the house-but I shall leave this for another post!
It would be nice if it was a case of 'try harder' next time, but there is no option to 'try' anymore as we are not directly involved in this early decision making and cannot really influence it. We always reply promptly and have our details sent promptly and our social worker chases profiles for us if we have heard nothing. Everything is being done for us and we are very grateful for such excellent representation.
We like to think we are becoming harder and try to not be overly hopeful with any profile and have learnt the next step- receiving child profiles- can also mean absolutely nothing with regards to outcome. One strange thing about the rejections is very often the social workers of the children do not close down your link, it is left live even though you have been told that they are pursuing someone else. We have the option to close these links down but we don't as personally it feels like severing chances- what if it doesn't work out and we took ourselves out of the race? So we don't and to be honest, it makes your profile attractive, if you have 4/5 open links you look popular, more in demand. I asked this question to the admin team of Link Maker and was told exactly this. So we leave them open until the social worker closes them- we don't want to be the ones to turn children down.
We had a few weeks in limbo where not a lot happened and then something happened that we didn't expect- a social worker contacted us about a profile.
We didn't expect this as we were no longer newbies on the site and our profile wouldn't have shown up as newly added. More unexpectedly, the children were 'popular' looking, insomuch as they ere young, seemingly uncomplicated (as much as children in care can be considered as such- never diminish the harm neglect and not meeting a child's needs can affect a child for life). We also recognised the profiles. We had seen them in the very early days, I remember turning my laptop to Karl and talking about them and not enquiring at the time as we were unsure how many to apply for and unsure we could cope with two boys. I the early days we were applying for more single children than siblings. I remember being very torn at the time. They had then disappeared from the site so they were no longer an option and when this happens you assume they have found a family- there were also links already on them and that can make you think 'what's the point?' as several other families are already officially in the running for top spot.
On looking at the profile sent to us, there were 9 open links on them. It was very confusing why they would want us as a 10th link. We accepted the invite to link with a sense of confusion. I questioned our social worker about it to find out about it and to send our PAR on.
It turns out they already had our PAR as another social worker at the adoption agency had sent it to them already. It was them who made the link and discussed us prior to us receiving the request. i was aware that our profile was sent out to potential matches that we didn't know about as our social worker had said that there was no reason to tell us about all the social workers they sent our details to unless they turned into a link. This makes complete sense. I knew it was happening but hadn't heard anything from them about anything ever occurring from their background work. The question was still there as to why they were interested in us when this was an 'old' profile as we remembered it from February and they had other links already. When we went to pick up the profiles we found out that they had been looking into a family and it had fallen through- no details as to why. This still didn't answer why there were 9 other links (potentially 8 of them were others they had already read profiles for- or at least asked for them). I can't say that we felt particularly hopeful here as we couldn't understand why they wanted to look at us when there were others they had live.
One step further was taken on this and the medicals were sent to our social worker. this is a step we hadn't got to before.
Over the weekend, Karl's mum, my mum and Karl's sister all attended an information day about supporting us in adoption and what to expect when we had a child/ children. They felt a little left out as they seemed the only family where children hadn't already been placed. They had lots of questions for us and talking about how two couples on the same panel date as us had a match. My mum, not the most sensitive of people at times! This made me at least feel like a failure, like there was something wrong with us but then we had to keep reminding ourselves we had a couple of profiles we turned down- maybe those children would have gone forward and we would have also been matched, done visiting and be at the point of having them in the home. It was just luck that these couples had a child/ children very early. We know we did the right thing to turn down some previous profiles; they were wrong for us and us for them. We always said that we would be picky for the first 6 months. As it turns out, seeing forum posts, we are not that picky at all- some have made mention of things like 'we want a a 3 year old girl', 'we want a 0-3 child'. With our range of 0-6, 1 or 2 children ,boy or girl- it turns out we are pretty flexible in our options at the moment. I have been shocked how little some seem to 'live in the real world' with regards to finding a child/ children.
The Monday after this, I was contacted to say that the children's social worker wanted to visit us as a potential match and that currently we were the only family they were considering!
It has been a very long 3 weeks preparing for that visit... and we are soundly shattered with the amount of work we have done in the house-but I shall leave this for another post!
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