Has anyone else had a second opinion assessment done by Pac-UK? I guess I’m hoping someone else out there has experienced PAC-UK as a second opinion and can give me an idea if this was “normal”.
Having been going through the assessment process since September 2017, we have just finished going through a second opinion assessment done by Pac-UK. We are still waiting for the report from them to be written and sent to our social worker. We have had two sessions with them after our social worker’s manager had concerns over our assessment - She was not happy that our Social worker had recommended us for panel as both my Husband and I suffer from depression. This was despite his previous manager signing us off.
There were two ladies assessing us. One was an Adult Services Counsellor and Advice Line Counsellor, who has been an adoption social worker and manager previously. The other was the Head of Child & Family Service, with over 20 years of professional adoption experience.
The first two hour session included “Sand therapy” with us adding toys to the sand to represent the positive things we could bring as adopters on one side and negative things on the other. We then spent a lot of time holding hands, looking into each other’s eyes describing what represented what, and repeating what the other had said. They gave us a book to read between the sessions.
In the second session (almost three hours) we watched an episode of Family Wanted (BBC 2007), We wrote down and then told each other what we thought the boys were feeling, what the parents were feeling and what had the most emotions impact on us (whilst looking into each other’s eyes and holding hands). We then repeated back to each other what the other had said.
We then talked about what I would need from Monkey, as the parent left at home all day. The two therapist were quite frank about how Monkey may need to be my emotional punch bag if a child was very negative towards me.
Finally, we filled in three different questionnaires/surveys relating to mental health. They gave us really positive vibes at the end of the second session with them giving us tips on how to structure the first few weeks (and months) after placement.
Anyone had anything like that?
McMoo x
