XII. Waiting for a Placement, Page 4

Why Can’t We Meet the Child Now?

You might wonder why they don’t put you and child together early on to see how you get along. If the child is very young that is indeed a possibility. However older children will have experienced a lot of rejection in their lives and the social worker wants to avoid raising their hopes only to have them dashed again, so you will very likely not get to meet your child until very late in the process, maybe not until after the panel meeting. What can sometimes happen is that the social worker will arrange for you to “accidentally” be somewhere where the child is going to be, such as a fast-food restaurant or playground, and you will be able to observe him unawares. But even quite young children who have been in care soon get to recognise the signs that they are being covertly observed, so you may well not be offered even this opportunity.

Preparing an Introductory Photo Album or Video

Besides approaching clearing houses and checking the advertisements in their photo-listings and the general newspapers, there is something else constructive you can do, if you are hoping to adopt a child over, say, toddler age. If a child is identified as possibly a good match for you, his social worker may want to open the subject with him. He will already know that people are looking for a new family for him — the social workers and his foster family or children’s home staff have been preparing him to move on for some time — but the social worker may want to start preparing him for a possible match with you as soon as she is pretty sure it is going to come off.

You can help in that process by preparing a photo album or video for use by the social services. It might only be presented to the child after the match is approved by the panel, or maybe a little before. It can be shown to the child to prepare him for his first meeting with you, and can have further use during the introduction period, as you go over it with him and he looks at it with his carers while you are not with him.

The presentation can cover such things as your home and garden, family members, pets, the neighbourhood, corner sweet shop, school, house of worship, etc. If there is a brother or sister waiting for the child in his new family it might be an idea for him or her to narrate the video or write the captions (or for you to do it as if you were the child), from future sibling’s point of view. Although you will probably want to leave the finishing touches until you have a particular child in mind, there is much work which can be done before then, in choosing or taking photos, mounting them in an album, shooting film, etc.

We made a photo album for our new son, which the social worker gave him the afternoon we were matched, before we arrived to start the introductions the next day. Some of the captions, “written” by our 10-year-old son, were:

· This is our grandfather. He’s Mum’s dad. He used to be a teacher, but he’s retired now. That’s Mary and me sitting next to him at her birthday party.

· This is the road into town. On the corner is a shop and post office, where we go to spend our pocket money on Saturdays. The people in the shop have two little boys, Carl and Davy.

· Upstairs is the big bathroom, and a little one.

· And there’s Mum and Dad’s bedroom, and the study. The study has all of Mum and Dad’s books, and the computer, and it’s also where Dad dries the clothes in the winter, so it’s usually a mess.

· I’ve got lots of Lego all over the floor, and Dad is always yelling at me to clear it up. There’s a big wardrobe you can walk into and play caves in.

· The school is really close to home. We can walk there in about 3 minutes. It’s only 2 years old. There are 150 kids in the school, and the headmaster is Mr. Evans.

· In winter sometimes it snows. We’ve never had enough to make a proper snowman, but sometimes there’s enough to slide on.

His foster family said he went all over the street showing the pictures of his new family to everyone.

© Roger Ridley Fenton