Searching...

A journey of unknown length. The thing with looking for a match is that it can take days, months or years. I am comfortable with focussing on the next steps. It's something that really grew from the pacing lessons I learnt as I worked through illness and disability challenges previously. It was important to me to share the journey that I'm going on with my friends and family. For support through the roller coaster of the process and for them to also be able to have time to adjust to the journey and the likelihood of new additions, but it's strange trying to explain the pace.

I use the LinkMaker website to search for children who I think might be a match.  I log on and click 'advanced search' - unfortunately it doesn't remember these settings for me. I set it to search for two children (2 min and 2 max), I also scroll down to ensure that it doesn't show me children that they've said would only be suitable to be adopted by couples or by adopting families with a male parent. My social worker has indicated that at this stage i should really only be searching in my more immediate vicinity, ideally they would like to match me with children within the same agency/authority.

At the time I'm writing this, there are eight sibling pairs fitting the criteria. I think this is the highest i've seen since I started on the site just over six months ago. I'm only permitted to put in one expression of interest (EoI) at any time. 

When i first logged on, there were two pairs of siblings that i felt might be appropriate, but wanted to run through them with my social worker. She was able to point out some aspects that were implied between the lines. She did agree one of the two could have been appropriate, but they were no longer available for me to put my EoI in for once we'd had the conversation. 

The summer was quiet for additional profiles, but in the Autumn I put in an EoI for two boys. This was immediately turned down because they had already booked in their shortlisted interviews. Almost immediately another pair appeared who felt like a good match and their profiles didn't seem to indicate an unreasonable level of need for me as a single parent.  After a couple of weeks, I pursued them with my social worker to see whether I should have heard anything. I was told they were awaiting a court date an additional 6 weeks away. 

Whilst I waited, I was told that those that had the shortlisting interviews hadn't worked out - did i want to pursue the previous pair again? ...I couldn't pursue both pairs. I declined in favour of pursuing the long wait for the others.

After the quiet 6 weeks, in an exchange about a virtual family finding event, my social worker dropped into the conversation that it was looking unlikely for me to get matched with them. Their family finder appeared to be pursuing a couple for their needs. The profiles had neither indicated a need for a couple, nor a higher level of need, so i was naturally disappointed. I was asked if I wanted to withdraw, but felt that I didn't want to be the person to remove the option at that time.

So, we reached part way into November and i was contacted by a different region - had i seen one of their sibling/pairs? The regional factor would add some logistical challenges and potentially some concern from my own area. I waited a day for the weekend in order to have some time to take a look through properly with some headspace from the working week.

I decided not to pursue those in the other region at this time, but was buoyed by being contacted. I reached out for a different sibling pair who were in region. My social worker was contacted so that their family finder could see my PAR (Potential Adopter Report, the ~60page report on me that i wrote about in previous blogs).

A week later, I was contacted by my social worker (not through the website like previously) - i'd been shortlisted and could read the children's full reports (~70 pages each) to see whether i wanted to pursue them. 

I had the weekend to review the reports and sat in my car after work on Monday to chat through all the details and implications with my social worker.

A few days later, it was confirmed that I would have a shortlisting interview in my home. 

So that's my journey to my first shortlisting. I'd love it to be successful and be my last one, but i recognise it depends what the cards have in store and the match may not be as it appears right now, or more appropriate adopter(s) may be also in the shortlist. For now, I take the small celebration of having been shortlisted at this time and thought it seemed a good time to share the searching journey so far.