Shortly after approval we agreed with our social worker that we would have monthly (on the monthly anniversary of our approval date) email contact with her, but of course should a suitable child come through she would notify us outside of that predetermined contact. Those emails felt like a waste of time as there was never anything to say, and in a way it felt like our SW was trying to find something to tell us, albeit it was mostly always a negative email, so she wouldn’t ‘lose us’ to another authority. Despite Panel’s thoughts on the matter, and what we agreed at the time, the Government said we had a right to look outside our LA after 3 months. Truth be told we were both at peace with having a bit of a wait, but had decided we’d probably have a chat at the 6 month mark with our SW about at least widening our search to the local consortium of LAs.
Then 4 months post approval we got ‘the call’. A call from our social worker informing us of a baby girl who, on paper, sounded right for us. After listening to Sophia’s (not her real name) story and making quick notes to relay to Mr R later the call ended with me agreeing to email our SW that evening with our thoughts. As soon as I was home from work I bombarded Mr R with all the details I’d been given about Sophia. We discussed her ‘story’ and decided we’d like to hear more. I emailed our SW, knowing she’d said we wouldn’t hear anything until the following week. However, the following morning I received a reply from her apologising that Sophia wasn’t suitable for us after all. It turned out that Sophia had more complex needs than our SW had been lead to believe, and that Sophia’s SW hadn’t even read our PAR properly before contacting our SW. If she had she would have known that we weren’t suitable, and could have spared us getting our hopes up.
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