Wee received our first letter this week from the powers that be. They thank us for our completed forms however are sorry that they cannot allocate a social worker at this time. They will call us as soon as they can.
Cue raised eyebrows, reading of the back of the sheet to make sure we hadn't missed anything...
I understand that they are stretched and that we can't expect a social worker to turn up on the doorstep overnight, but there was not a hint of timescale to that response. I don't know (I suspect) it is just a form letter sent out to everyone, perhaps they don't know the timescale themselves, but it leaves us in limbo and I imagine it is a taster of things to come.
I was pretty fed up. Then babies were brought in at work and I was more fed up. Then a friend finally had her baby and I was happy for her (then quietly fed up). I got on with my day being grumpy and then had a peek at Twitter. There was a lovely post by @adopting_dad talking about going to court and his adoption finally becoming 'official' today. It truly warmed the cockles... and I felt much better.
Lesson for this evening, then, is try to look at the bigger picture and focus on the prize (if you will excuse my buzzword bingo) - but I'm not promising I won't be fed up again some time soon.
Hi @adopting_dad here. Thanks for the mention. I'm pleased it warmed the cockles. I guess it's been two years (to the month) since we had our first meeting with social services and many more years since we started trying for kids naturally, followed by IVF, then scratching our heads and wondering what we might have spent that money on and so on...
ReplyDeleteToday our little girl is ours! It's hard to get our head around but we made it. Time is the killer here. Everything takes so much time. The social workers for us have been brilliant but the system they are in is overloaded and and skewed in favour of bureaucracy. We got through it by ignoring 'time'. We resigned ourselves to the bureaucracy, gave them what they wanted every time without question and got on with our lives. And what a fine time we had too. Then one day we were accepted to adopt a little girl with the possibility of her brother to follow. We are now being re-assessed (bureaucracy) for him and if all goes to plan, he will be with us in the new year. That will signal the end of the 'making babies' period of our lives and we will consider ourselves very lucky.
I wish you every luck in the world. It is so rewarding and worth the wait. Even if it does drag on and the bureaucracy does come first. I look forward to reading your blogs from here on in.