M

No, we had not become 00 agents.  Although we do have to be pretty secretive these days!  M is the redacted name of our social worker from Adoption Focus.  We met this lovely man in a corridor last October.  He immediately put us at our ease.  I cannot stress enough how important the relationship with your social worker has to be when you are going through all of this drama.  The trust between us had to be absolute.  We were about to reveal all of our deepest, darkest secrets to him.  The real stuff that forms you as a person. You really cannot give that to any old numpty.  Thankfully, M demonstrated nothing but compassion and care throughout his time with us.  

The first meeting in our house was to look at health and safety.  We thought our house was wonderfully safe.  We certainly felt good in it. M had what essentially amounted to a clipboard as he inspected our home.  It suddenly felt like I’d let my nemesis (the Ofsted Inspector) into our safe place.  He pointed out various trip hazards, the lack of guard on the cooker, some potentially suspicious plants in the garden and our treasure trove of alcohol which was inconveniently placed at toddler reach height! Crikey – it was a death trap!  We promised faithfully that we would change everything.  Standard me I said we would do it straightaway. Husband called for patience and restraint.  

When we got upstairs to the bedrooms, we indicated to M that we could probably comfortably take two. A significant increase on our original one.  That’s when he said it. “Or three”.  This was the first time he said it but it wasn’t the last.  This was a much repeated refrain over the next few weeks.  Every time we said two, M would say “Or three”.  Sometimes we felt that there was some over-arching plan for us that we hadn’t be briefed on.  Again with the secret agent thing.  Probably not, but it niggled at us…. And planted a seed in our very suggestible brains…well, my brain at least…

The next few visits concentrated our our beliefs and state of mind.  We were asked some really difficult questions.  The most difficult thing was thinking about distant memories and wondering whether that happened when we were children or teenagers or young adults. Oh no.  We were at that age.  When everything is hazy.  Why did this have to happen now?  Discussions up for grabs were about how our parents handled grief with us, our experiences at school, our belief in education, the importance of a tolerant society.  There were lots more on top of that.  The report that was compiled on us was pretty big.  It is a weird experience in and of itself to be reading about your life in black and white.  We are distinctly average..  Biographies will never be written about us.  Don’t get me wrong we contribute.  Being a teacher and social worker makes us strong socialists and members of the ‘society’ but it is comfortingly low key.  

I will give one anecdote about our report which we did change slightly.  You can see how politicians and others get misquoted in the press.  M wanted to know about our personalities.  In essence, I am worry personified and my husband is as laid back as you can get.  Please don’t read that as a pretty chill bloke.  It goes way deeper than that.  He is horizontal.  It means our relationship works. I bring the drama and he brings the reason.  M was looking for an example of when he gets stressed and how he deals with it.  We gave him the example of Gary Megson’s sacking from Sheffield Wednesday.  To me, this means absolutely nothing. Probably  less than that. To fervent Owls however… well I’d never seen him so animated.  Never heard that kind of language (not strictly true…).  When we later read it in the report, it sounded like he regularly flies off the handle at inane things. So not who he is – it also sounded a bit flippant.  As if he didnt care about big things.  Not M’s fault, of course, but it was comforting to realise we did have some control over the report.  There was also a very unflattering account of how I played my face in Pisa because it was hot (it was hot, even the Italians thought it unseasonably warm that year) and apparently I was quite derogatory about the Leaning Tower because ice-cream does not constitute an offer of food…. I think I was pretty forthcoming about my generous list of faults.  

Once all this was done, M had to go away and write something that would make us seem like reasonable people who could handle children. He clearly wrote 3 children at the top… The wait then for panel was full of doubting and worrying that they would clearly see that I was not good enough, that they would see through me, that I would be seen for who I am… My mind does not work in a sensible or fact-based style. IT is very frustrating but I am learning to live with it.  Bizarrely, it was a factor in our selection for these particular children. And so, on tenter hooks, we waited.