You would have seen from our previous blog that we had some meetings with agencies coming up. It's been a few weeks since and we are pleased to say we have now chosen the agency we will be going through the adoption process with! It took a lot of thought and several discussions as it is a huge commitment to make and we wanted to know we will be supported post adoption.
We had a two hour meeting at the first agency, however whilst the conversation itself was informative we both felt the person we met was a little defensive and didn't appear to listen to what we said. We were told we would have been one of the youngest couples to adopt which surprised us both. We left the meeting feeling deflated and perhaps knew at this time that this wasn't the agency for us, despite having outstanding reports.
The next agency made a home visit the same evening as our first meeting, so it made making comparisons much easier!
We spent over an hour going through numerous questions about us as couple, a brief overview of our background as individuals and as a couple. We were also asked about why we had chosen adoption and what we could bring to a family setting. We felt this meeting went well and the agency were much more flexible in terms of their approach to the entire process and us. There appeared to be no rush or restriction on timescales - we felt in control.
We knew from our first agency meeting that we need to do plenty of reading and researching the types of children in the care system and the issues they may face. It is to prepare us for what is to come, but to give us sufficent background on these issues and whether we can face them.
The next step is submitting our ROI - Register Of Interest to the agency and we then begin Stage 1, which is all about the checks including personal, financial, references etc. It'll be a fun few months and we will take a few months break over the Christmas period before going full steam-ahead (if we pass Stage 1!) into Stage 2 and then the Adoption Panel!