So, on Thursday this week, also St Patrick's Day, we went along to the New Family Social drink. New Family Social (from here on referred to as NFS) is a social network for gay and lesbian prospective adopters. It's a great site and I think it'll be invaluable as we go through the process but I'll come back to that. We were both a little unsure as we made our way to the NFS drinks which were in a gay bar in central London. You never quite know who is going to be there and what kind of conversation you're going to have to make. We first met the organiser and founder of NFS. He is young guy, just s regular guy and very nice and easy to chat to. We pretty much start quizzing him straight away and he is more than happen to answer any questions. He and his partner have a little boy that they adopted 3 years ago and you can tell when you talk to him that is was one of the best things he's done. We then meet an older lady who adopted some time ago, it was great chatting to her. I could list everyone but that would be boring needless to say that we spoke to some lovely people who were at verying stages of the process who all had interesting experiences. I'm pretty sure we'll be staying in contact with pretty most of them. I'm already looking forward to the next get together.
As I said earlier, NFS is a great and informative site. We recently had our membership upgrade and now have access to the membership map. It pin-points all the NFS memberships in the UK. I was amazed to see how many members there are even in our local area that are in the process or already have their children. It gave me a lot of hope and also fuelled my excitement. I selected a few of those closest and sent cheekily sent them a message introducing David and I and basically laying the groundwork in the hope that we can get together at some point. And do you what? Every single one I emailed replied with words of encouragement and advice. A couple even sent their phone numbers and one sent his facebook contact. He also told me that another gay couple with a young son are moving literally five minutes up the road from me. It's great to know there is a ready made network out there and I hope we are welcomed into it. Where better is there to learn from than those who are experiencing it everyday.
We had another meeting today with a difficult local council. Lucky two girls that we meet at NFS drinks had also arranged to go along. It was a real relief to know that we have some sort of support there. These information sessions consists of several people interested in adoption meeting with members of the adoption service who give a presentation, answer questions, set the scene, etc, and can be quite intimidating and awkward for a gay couple. So having them there was really good. They are a lovely couple of girls and funnily enough only live around the corner from us. We gave them a lift home and discussed the meetin, our thoughts, observation and concerns. There was a lot of information given, some of which we already knew but those presenting weren't very good. Their language skills weren't great and they weren't really that clued up on some of the detail. I hope they are not typical of the social workers that this borough offers.
So the question now is do we continue with this new council or do we keep looking? Do we hang on for the first authority we saw or not? It fair to say that we could go with either and be lucky enough to get a great social worker, we could also end up with a terrible social worker after have a great experience at a first meeting with another council. Is anywhere perfect??
We are quite lucky, we are a mixed race couple and that is what they are all screaming out for. Maybe we'll get lucky. Fingers crossed.
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