# Can they turn us down now???



## JoJoSa3 (Sep 23, 2006)

Hi all,

My DH and I have been through the home study and we are hoping to go to panel soon.  Apparently a question has been raised about how much time we have spent with children.  We have spent a lot of time with our neices and nephews, taken them for days out etc but we have never looked after children overnight or for days at a time.  I'm freaking out that this might be a reason for the panel to turn us down as adopters.  Can that happen?  We've been through the home study really quickly after having a good prep course where they seemed to be impressed with us and our social worker hasn't thought that there would be any problems for us, and up till now it's felt like we were OK with the whole thing.  We'd had such good feedback.

Has this question cropped up for anyone else?  I just don't know what this means, how much time do you have to spend with kids before it is enough?  This just never came up during the home study and I'm a bit gobsmacked and confused.  If anyone has any idea what this is about I'd really appreciate any information,

JJ


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## Old Timer (Jan 23, 2005)

Hi JJ

Who has raised the question?  This didn't crop up for us as we had looked after our neices and nephews overnight loads of times.  Could you fit in an overnight stay before panel?? 

TBH, I would think a lot of people have never looked after children overnight either before adopting or having birth children.  I certainly wouldn't think this is something they would refuse to approve you because of.

Speak to your SW and see what she/he advises.  I do know of one couple on our prep course that hadn't had children stay over and they were approved and matched.

OT x


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## ♥ M J ♥ (Apr 17, 2004)

Hi

Like OT says who has raised this question? 

If you can try and "borrow" once of your nieces/nephew for the night or even just a full day including tea time and see how that goes unless you have a willing little one who will sleep over

I ahve to say we have loads and loads of experiance of looking after 2of our nieces for weekends/weeks at a time HOWEVER nothing can compare to parenting a child via adoption to start with as your not have a child you have known for a long time and built a bond with your parent a child you have spent upto 12days with for a few hours each day!

Good luck and try not to worry

xxx


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## JoJoSa3 (Sep 23, 2006)

Thanks for the replies, I think it was the adoption team manager who asked about this.  My neices and nephews live miles away, and when we do get together I spend a lot of time with them, take them out for full days etc.  My youngest neice who is nine has always wanted to come and spend a holiday with us, but she's wanted to come with her sister who has major problems staying away from home - she won't even stay with her Nanny and Grandad.
We have close friends with children who we go on holiday with and spend a lot of time with, but we've never had children to stay over with us as that's just not the relationship we have with the families we know.  If we are babysititng then we go to them.
I'm really worried about this now, I think that we have a great relationship with all the kids we know and I can't understand why that might not be good enough.  I know our presonal references were all positive about our relationships with their families too.  If this isn't enough then I'll be really shocked.
JJ


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## ♥ M J ♥ (Apr 17, 2004)

Hi JJ

Sounds to me like the manager is just "throwing" questions in that panel "could ask" as if your SW, her manager and also the 2nd opinion visit SW has covered everything they can think of then panel will just ask you general questions.

Have you spoke about how you have babysat for friends children in their own home, how you have been on holiday with friends and their children and get to see the "day to day" bit and not just the fun side of having children and also about how your nieces/nephews dont live locally so not able to have them.

What you need to remember is that yes its you and DH getting approved however your SW will be just doing everything to get you through panel as this is "their" job and they need to be able to answer any question panel put to them about you - our SW went into the panel hearing 1st for about 10mins and she needed to be able to "speak as us" about any question they ask before we went in.

I know its easy to say however-I really wouldnt worry about it.

xxx


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## Diz74 (Jan 1, 2007)

Hi, I had read on the boards about people being asked to do voluntary work with children, have children to stay overnight or be observed with children.  We were never asked to do this and when we asked our SW they said it's not necessary, although I am surprised it's not been discussed at all in your HS.

What I did (and what you could do) was to write a list of all our experience.  I split it into sections for each child in our support network and then listed experiences e.g. changed nappies, took out for an afternoon to a farm park, babysat, child woke up crying while we were babyitting and how we dealt with this, what I did when I found my nephew playing on the stairs (explained it was dangerous and there was plenty of space to play downstairs instead), how we dealt with our nephew when he started crying for his mummy in the car (reassured him and distracted him by asking him to sing songs), etc.  This all came to about 2 to 3 pages and our SW said that if we could write that much about our experience then we really didn't have a lack of experience.

Good luck with it.


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