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We attended an information evening with our LA & then took our time to reflect on whether we were ready for the adoption journey ahead. After enjoying being dinky's for a few more months we took the plunge & made the initial call to apply to be adopters. SW #1 arrived a few weeks later, a lovely hippy dippy typically 'old school' social worker-esque lady arrived at our door for an informal chat about why and who we wanted to adopt. All good so far. A few weeks after that we were told we had been 'approved to apply' which we were amused by as we thought we already had applied! but never mind the semantics, we were on the road to being parents, yippee! The SW had some concerns that we were 'too content and happy' & that we had not had any tough experiences in our marriage to work through, but that could be discussed in more detail during the assessment. SW#2 was despatched & the approval process began, home visits, medicals, discussions ranging from how we manage our emotions, how our sex life was & how we would keep it once children were placed with us, our childhoods, our working life, our finances, references from friends & family including them being interviewed, you name the hoop, we jumped through it, and we were ecstatic to be 'approved for adoption' around 9 months later. SW#2 left the department & SW#3 joined our journey. SW#3 who was lovely & extremely professional took us through the process of searching for our children to be, but despite 'being like gold dust' as an approved 'ethnically diverse' couple, the road seemed very long as the LA had no children matching our requirements. Now, just to be clear, our requirements were not overly demanding as far as we know: a single child or siblings aged between 0-3 years of either sex who were reasonably healthy and matched (if possible) our cultural heritage. Shouldn't be too difficult should it? A match of 2 siblings was made quite quickly but due to the severity of the children's health issues which were only brought to light after 'life appreciation day' and delayed meetings with the adoption health specialist took place (delays partly because genetic testing was taking place) the very emotionally draining decision was made to withdraw from the match as we felt like we could not meet the children's needs sufficiently. Exhausted and impatient to be parents we then had to wave goodbye to SW#3 as she moved to pastures new & welcomed SW#4 who we secretly referred to as 'the patroniser' into our lives. Sadly one of our parents passed away and SW#4 advised the matching process would now be on hold for 6-9 months in order to grieve. Where do LAs get these magic figures from? No grief counselling of course because that would've cost the LA money as our local GP didn't provide it. So wait we did. The 'patroniser' was now concerned that we had gone through too tough a time &