By way of saying hello ....


This blog is inspired by Fernando @ www.twoguysadopting.com. I have been reading their Blog about their journey and it is a great help. I figure we should document our experince of trying to adopt living in cornwall as a gay couple. I hope it helps others and also that one day our child or children will be able to read it back and have a record of our time together.

Ben and I have been together for Five years and we had our Civil Partnership earlier this year. As I said we live in Cornwall and we started our adoption journey in August this year. I think the laws have changed somewhat since the Two Guys were going throught the system. So here goes this our journey so far ....

We have been to the introduction meeting. This is a very informal meeting where we were given a lot of information and basically asked if it has put us off ... it didn't.

So we then had an interview at home with a social worker. Stef came to our house and we talked a little about ourselves and our family and why we were looking to adopt. She was very freindly and supportive and said that she would be recommending that we get approved. Which we did. It was a short wait to get the approval letter and then we had to wait to be assigned our own social worker. We hoped it would be Stef as she was very nice and seemed possitive about same sex couples adopting. But we know it is down to work load etc. We were contacted soon after by Lesley saying that she was our social worker and we arranged our first home visit with her. She was very friendly on the phone and although it was a shame not to be working with Steph we were happy.

The First visit was fairly straight forward. A LOT of paper work was left for us to fill in and although it seemed daunting at first was fairly easy to fill in. We also booked in the next 4 sessions. Lesley also said she would be emailing us so questions for us to fill in before the next session.

These questions will form the basis of our report with additional info written by Lesley. I found it fairly straight forard to write about my childhood and my experiences and how I think that will affect me as an adopter. Ben struggled a little with it as he has a more complicated family structure but She only needed one of us to do it for the first session so I got mune out the way and ben took his time to write his out. 

The next home visit was Lesley going over my answers and talking over bits of it so she understood better. I think she was happy with what I had written but I may have done a little much. I have no problem talking baout me! It is a good thing that she gets to know us properly. We only went over about half of the first question - there were three - so the next session will be more of the same I guess

We also have our medical booked for this Saturday morning and have filled in all our CRB forms and given her the copies of passports, utility bills etc.

Cornwall Council say that they will try and get us to panel in 6 month. They have to get us there in 8 months max. So it will be May at the latest. 

Right you are all up to date with where we are - any questions feel free to comment.

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