Wednesday 11th February

Well, this was Dan's evening to see Sally on his own. It is a condition of the home study that you each have a session on your own with the social worker.

Dan was asked about our relationship, what he thought the strengths and weaknesses were, what we are looking forward to about having children and what we think we will find difficult.

Then she asked him if we would accept 3 children! He said he found this a bit of a shock and wasn't expecting it! He basically said that we hadn't considered this and he would need to discuss with me but his first thought is that 3 at once would probably be too much. Sally explained this was because lots of sets of 3 children are coming through at the moment.

Sally also explained that, although she would see us through to approval at panel, after that she would no longer be our social worker. This is a great shame as we are really starting to build up a relationship with her now and we trust her. But she said this may work in our favour because she will be moving over to the child placement side. Basically, we will be allocated a new social worker and, because Sally won't be our social worker on the adoptive parents side any more, if she gets suitable children, she can consider us to be the adoptive parents. So it could work out for the best although it means changing social worker in the middle of the process.

We also have to consider what will happen to the children if we split up and what we want the arrangements to be for the children should we both die. Wow, I hadn't even thought of this, but apparantly we will be asked this at panel so we need to think about it. Dan's immediate answer was my best friend and her partner, but we will obviously need to discuss this with them and see if they are in agreement.

We have no homework for next time but lots to think about. We have now discussed the possibility of 3 children and are not sure we could go from no children to 3 childen at once - it may be just too much but we will continue to give it some thought