Phew! Our social worker sent the first sections of our PAR for us to read. The PAR is the Prospective Adopter’s Report. It’s the form used by the ‘panel’ to decide if we should be approved as prospective adopters. After approval, it is also used by children’s social workers to learn about us, to decide if we could be a match for the children, and of course is used by the matching panel so they can decide if we’re a good match. It’s an incredibly important document. Our future depends on these pages.

It was mostly the ‘factual’ sections, with info about our dates/places of birth, etc. There were a few corrections to be made. Also, I had a phone call with our s/w who wasn’t sure if she could find a copy of my ‘indefinite leave to remain’ visa. I’m sure that we provided it and showed the original to the administrative staff back in about February or March.

We also had to write a bit, for the PAR, about what we learned in the training/felt about the training. This is what we wrote:

“We solidified the understanding that we already had of attachment difficulties. The training extended our understanding of the later-life effects of neglect on the brain of very young children. The instability of life for children in care was graphically demonstrated to us, in particular using the ‘James’ role play. We were introduced to Theraplay; this is one area in particular that we would like more training, depending upon the child/children placed with us.

In addition to the training offered by Family Care, we have both read numerous books, blogs, and forums related to adopting. This has provided more depth to the training we received. ”

After I responded, with the updates and paragraph about training, the s/w did confirm that they had my visa copy already.