Sorry I’ve been so quiet this month. I thought I’d catch you up on what’s happening now. I feel such a sense of relief that we made it through to approval.

Aside from thinking about adoption (only all the time!), the last 5 weeks have been extremely busy. It was my brass band’s Proms season, with 3 concerts in 8 days. I had a really bad cold for all of them, which really dulled my enjoyment compared to other years. We went to two different Bonfire weekends — one in Wales and one in Derbyshire. Both were very very foggy. Here’s a shot of the gorgeous view we had at our friend’s house in Wales:

On to adoption matters now! We’re in what could be described as the ‘family finding’ stage. This stage could take a few months or it could be a year or more.

In the afternoon on the day we were approved, we registered with Adoption Link. It’s now been renamed Link Maker, by the way. In addition to Link Maker, our social worker has put us on the National Register. She has also signed us up for a couple of events.

We have an ‘Exchange Day’ coming up in a few weeks. That’s an event at which there will be social workers and prospective adopters. The s/w’s for the children will have profiles of children. We will be armed with flyers with our profile which will include our s/w’s contact information. Speaking of our profile, we would like to change the photo that we used. Otherwise, I think the content is good. Very soon I’ll get moving on getting some printed profiles to hand out.

The second event we have is called an ‘Activity Day’. I have slightly mixed feelings about this. At an activity day, children in care who have placement orders come to a ‘party’. Prospective adopters can play with them and talk to social workers. I’ve read on the adoption forums (Adoption UK) that sometimes these kinds of events cause prospective adopters to change their preconceptions about some kinds of needs that children have.

Other than these things, our s/w has been family finding for us. She has a couple of profiles to talk to us about tomorrow. We’ll see her then for the first time since our panel day.

Tomorrow evening our VA is having a training course on music. It’s about using music as therapy for children with attachment difficulties. I’m looking forward to it.