Very slow progress

Last week was spent making some calls...

I phoned about J, whose profile I posted on here a while ago. (As I suspected!) her family finding SW had been on leave the whole of the summer so there hadn't been any progress. She will, however, be passing all of the foster carer profiles she's received over to J's SW and they'll select those they feel are the closest match. She said they'll be in touch... which I now know means it's very likely I'll hear anything!... so I'm going to call back in a week or so to pester them for another update :)

As well as J, there's another girl (A, 11 years old) who I'm very keen on. I actually saw A's profile before J's, and I called for information a long time ago - beginning of the year I think. I really like this child's SW! She's the first one I've 'met' who sounded happy to talk to me on the phone, and even more amazing she replies to my emails, often the same day and sometimes even immediately! Anyway, the reason I haven't mentioned this child before is that things had been put on hold, and the earliest they expected to know more was mid September. I didn't want to even think about it until I knew what was happening. Trying to be a bit proactive, I'd updated my profile to reflect my new house etc and thought I'd email it to the SW 'just in case' but also as a way of asking for an update ;) Turns out they are now looking for a long term foster carer. We've sent a few emails back and forth and the next step will be my link worker speaking to A's SW on Monday. I'm hoping this is the one that will work out, as from A's profile she seems perfect, but at the same time I'm trying to not be too hopeful.

And just in case things don't work out, I started making some other calls. I have called my local authority to request an inital meeting as I know if I was with them, not an agency, I'd probably have had plenty of placements by now. This is likely to be a very slow process, so I should know the outcome of my enquiries into J and A before I get my visit.

I have also made a couple of enquiries into adoption. I'm quite disheartened with my fostering experience (or lack of!) and wanted to find out what age my daughter would have to be before I could look into adopting a younger child. A 2 or 3 year age gap is normally required so I'm going to go with the flow these next couple of years and if it looks like an option by the time my bubba is nearing 4, I'm going to follow up those calls with a serious enquiry.