The Missing Adoption Update Blog

Through the course of the previous several months, I’ve tried to put updates on my own blog of the adoption assessment, and ended up not publishing these. This morning I did another. It sits unpublished. I can’t do it. There is so much frustration, anger over the long waits, such loss of hope when hearing other’s tales. I can no longer sit here, and bring myself to tears trying to blog about it.

This, though, this adoption process - where we’ve not heard from our own social welfare worker for seven weeks now, where we’ve done all the hard work ourselves, writing out documents, and hoping to ever get to an adoption panel meeting, and having it all dashed by silence from those in charge - this process is what sits behind as background to everything I am, and everything our family is at this moment, and over the last two years now. But my hubbie and I have some kind of silent agreement - to not talk about it together anymore. To not ring them, out of fear of seeming pushy, out of suspicions, and paranoia, and lost hope, and not being in control of our own lives. To not speak about it anymore.  

Comments

[Carole Huxel]

Dearest Michelle. In the face of any intractable monolith, which is exactly what any Social Service Agency is, it is human nature to go silent, pull in your head, and hide. But you need to force yourself to do exactly the opposite. This is a Test, Michelle I don't know if it's God's test, or the Agency's Test, or Life's Test, but it's a Test none-the-less. Your child is out there waiting for you, and the Test is to go find him/her. You must take charge of this process. You must go speak with social workers, even if you risk annoying them. You must go to different offices and get different people to know you. You must become familiar. You must haunt the internet, looking at available children and then contacting their social worker and getting to know THEM. This is your "pregnancy". This is how you psychologically earn your child. They don't get handed to us, more's the pity. We have to go FIND them. Your child is out there waiting for you. Take the summer, indulge in the self pity and misery. It feels good for awhile, and it is an emotion that needs to be worked through. But in September pull yourself together and take charge. There is no better time for finding your child than Sept-Dec, because all social workers want children with their forever-families for Christmas. But it's all in YOUR hands. YOU need to be in control.

My best.

Carole Huxel

[Michelle@Scrapability]

That's all true, thanks Carole. Although I can't blog much about it, we have decided to push a little bit more with our own social worker - even though she appears unavailable at the moment. There are now referees of ours making holiday plans who are yet to receive a home visit from her, and are wondering what is going on. So we have decided to simply ask, so that at least we can make some plans for this summer.

Here in the UK there are magazines and newspapers advertising children up for adoption. Until we get through the adoption panel itself after the full assessment is finally complete, we can not contemplate looking at those children who sit out of county to us. I feel some faith in the fact that the social welfare service will eventually match us with the right child for our family - however, it's the stop to all of this at the moment (and for weeks now) that is disheartening, and the non-communication from our particular social worker assigned. The system enforces that even for overseas adoptions we must first get through the assessment which appears somewhat halted a little at the moment, but we will make enquiries, trying not to be too frustrated (or pushy).