Public Forums

It was pretty much how it was for us - 23 years ago - and so I had to tell my line manager that it would probably be happening but wasn’t yet definite - and of course dates weren’t arranged till after confirmation - but couldn’t tell the other staff or parents (I was a teacher) till I’d actually gone which was really sad! This was because before the Christmas holidays it had just been to panel but still needed ADM decision and we started introductions the first day back. I was in and out that week so staff knew but was never in a position to tell parents (I did a handover during introductions)

Unfortunately this is just the way it seems to work. The first time we adopted, we gave work as much notice as possible but only got the matching certificate the day before I was due to go off for a year.

Just recently adopting for a second time and could only give more notice this time because intros started during the summer holidays.

Employers often have no experience of adoption and are often surprised that you can only give very little notice but it’s just the way it is!!

I gave my employees the heads up -so that they could be prepared and start to make plans even though they might not be able to action them. Just remind them that nothing is definite until all the paperwork comes through in case they do leap ahead too quickly.

We discussed this with work (it'll be my husband taking leave) both in general terms after we were approved, so his line manager knew about the process, and then more recently when we had a date for matching panel, to explain the various dates and likely scenarios. Then our panel got pushed back a month, which meant they had to rearrange everything again (I'm self-employed and my partner is an academic, so going off on leave during teaching time is very different than going off during non-teaching time. I think this delay to panel should work out in such a way that he goes off after teaching finishes for this semester, and then he'll be off all of next semester, and essentially back for marking, and then lots of holidays to take over the summer. Which works out much better than the first scenario, where he was going on leave halfway through a semester and back halfway through another! It's very frustrating that the agency (the council, in our case) can't give us actual dates to shoot for - like, this is the panel date, this is when the ADM signs off, and that is when you'd start introductions. They can do the first two, obviously, but only talk about the third in vague terms, like 'sometime in November'.

As far as introduction dates are concerned they foster carers can have many commitments to juggle, they may have other foster children, their own children, maybe they booked a holiday a year ago before they knew about potential matches.

It's not always that easy to fix a date in advance

I requested our intros be delayed a week because we realised that Mothers Day was in the middle of the dates initially proposed. Lots of things to take into consideration.