Registartion of interest (ROI)

Holiday seasons caused a delay between the social workers initial visit and the invitation to start stage one. Eventually though it is received and our couples story can continue.

Day 96

The paperwork begins! And boy, is there a lot of paperwork. The registration of interest (ROI) asks for a lot of information that is required to complete the various references and checks that form part of stage one. This also means June and Bill find themselves needing to tell more people about their journey both employers and friends. If they hadn't already told the family members who they were going to ask to be references, they would have needed to now. The good news is that everyone they have told has been over the moon for them.

In fact this feels like a good opportunity to talk about the common themes of telling people that you are planing to adopt. They can be best summarised as:

Excited for you.
Want to know how far into the process you are
Want to know how long the process will be / when you will get a child
1001 other quesitons about adoption and how it works.

Going into the process it is entirely possible to feel like you are ignorant. However as June and Bill found, the more you dicsuss it with people, the more you realise it is something that is not generally well understood.

Day 109

It took nearly two weeks, but the ROI forms were posted back. Unfortunately, this would not be the only time they had to post these forms to the adoption agency.

Day 127

After almost 3 anxiety filled weeks with no contact from the adoption agency, Bill and June reach out to find out what is happening. The agency are supposed to respond to a ROI within 5 days of receiving it, so to have not heard nearly 3 weeks after posting (Special delivery at that), something was wrong. Of course at this point, it's the weekend, so no one is working. They'll have to wait until Monday to hear back.

To take their minds off things they decided to go do some baby stuff window shopping. They went and locked at nursery furniture - cribs, baby changers, wardrobes, and also prams. Bill had really like the look of the icklebubba jogger travel system. To his mind it does everything they need, and and it does it for a steal of a price at £400. June though, didn’t like the handle. Instead she much prefered the icandy travel system as its handle was much nicer. After a small debate over whether a handle is worth £1400 extra, they agreed they would keep looking and try and find a middle ground. Spoiler alert folks, they do eventually find a middle ground, if the middle is almost exactly what June wanted in the first place.

Good news though, they liked the same nursery furniture. More spoilers though, absolutely zero decisions that they made at this point ended up being what they would buy when the time comes!

Day 128

Bad news from the adoption agency. Their registation of interest form has gone missing. Thankfully they had kept a digital copy and the agency were willing to accept this to get things moving forward.

Day 133