Let’s talk about the Adoption panel and what really goes on, to take the fear of the unknown out of it. This is the big day in the adoption application process, the one all prospective adopters wait eagerly for while secretly dreading the thought of it. It shouldn’t be built up into more than it is – an important step in a long process which continues for many months beyond it.
So let’s demystify it.
Our experience
In the end, ours was a fairly straight forward, even pleasant step in our 2 year+ journey to parenthood. I’ll break down the day, what you can expect and talk about how to prepare for it in a moment, but when I summarise it to friends and family now – I say it was in some ways an anticlimax after so much preparation in Stage 2. A formality that followed a lot of effort getting ready. I hope it is that way for you also when your day comes.
What happens on the day?
Here is a list of what you can expect on the day and following, and how to prepare.
| Stage | What to expect | How to prepare |
| Pre-panel prep | Your Social Worker arrives 15-20 mins before the call. | Talk through any questions the panel have provided ahead of time. Write out short answers. |
| Joining the call | You and Social Worker dial into the call (if remote, as most are). | Prepare your laptop, with charging cable. Set it up on the kitchen table on a stand (raising the screen) and position to have everyone in shot. |
| Introductions | A quick whip around the virtual room, names and roles. | N/A |
| Questions from panelists | The Lead will hand over to each panelist, who will ask their questions (probably to your Social Worker, giving you a chance to add any extra comments). | Your Social Worker will have a list of questions provided by panel in the days prior. Go through them yourselves and write down bullet point answers. Review with your Social Worker before the call. Keep each simple and positive. |
| Breakout room | The Admin will move you into a breakout room while they discuss for 5-10 minutes. | Make tea, go to the bathroom and make jokes. This is the awkward pause in the process. |
| Panel recommendation | The panel bring you back into the call and give their recommendation and best wishes. | Hold hands, support each other and just let it all happen. |
| Agency Decision Maker approval | You wait for up to 10 days for the Social Services big boss to give formal approval. | Share the good news of your partial approval with friends and family. Do the things that make you feel good (saunas, dinners, brunches, walking, running etc.). |
| Formal approval given | Your Social Worker will email and/or call you to give you the news of final, formal approval, or not (and a list of things that need work before re-applying). | Start thinking about 1 or 2 children, about the ages, gender and what you might be open to accept. Get on LinkMaker, look at profiles and discuss. See how you feel. |
After the panel
If approved:
- Panel Administrator (Pascale) meets with agency decision maker a week to 10 days later (on 29/1 at 5pm) and you get informed via Social Worker following that. We might not get it until the morning after.
If not approved:
- You and Social Worker go away and work on the recommended actions (training, life admin)
- Then you can book a second panel date when those items have been addressed
In our case we were lucky enough to get a unanimous approval, so a strong pass, and then waited impatiently for the 9 days until formal approval from Agency Decision Maker.
What we learned:
- We felt really well prepared and were grateful to our Social Worker for this. The reading and talking in Stage 2, the conversations we’d had between us about ‘1 or 2’ and ‘which ages would you consider’ calmed us. We felt like we had done the school year, sat the exam and were just waiting for the results to be read back to us. And a bit like this was another exam.
- The panelists seemed like good people, giving their time to do a good thing – assess and approve you as being suitable to become adoptive parents of children in need. We liked them and found their questions quite reasonable on the whole.
- We weren’t being interviewed, our Social Worker was. This became clear as the panel questions began – they were asking them of our Social Worker primarily, not of us. They’d been reading her report, and were seeking clarification on her professional opinion. The poor thing she looked quite nervous, though she did really well. We actually sat back and let it happen, just adding our own thoughts at the end of each answer.
- It isn’t about the questions. Some of the questions will seem a bit obvious, but they have to ask something! It felt like the panelists needed to ask some questions, but really only to confirm what they had already learned from reading the report and discussing our case.
How to make it easier on yourself
- Make space for panel. Clear your diary in the week leading up to panel. Book only nice, nurturing and gentle things in and put the DIY, the rushing about and the life admin on hold. This deserves complete focus and will be extremely draining and all consuming. I couldn’t think about much else during this week, and perhaps that’s for the best. It is important and it deserves the time spent on it.
- Simple and positive answers are all you need. Because it isn’t about the answers you give, because the report and the Social Worker’s answers are most of the game, you can just add a little bit to his or her responses on your behalf, and only if you feel it is needed. We liked adding a bit to each of her answers, and used this to opportunity re-emphasise the main point she had made.
- Be gentle with yourself (and each other). Like any major milestone in life, going to panel
- Make sure you celebrate after panel. It may, like ours, feel like a bit of an anticlimax. You’ve worked so hard for so many months (if not years) to get to this point, and once you get the yes from panel, there just isn’t the fanfare and warm congratulations you might have expected. Everyone reminds you this is just part of the approval, and you’ve got to wait for the formal Area Manager approval. Where is the big ‘well done!’? Where is the ‘what you are doing is so amazing, and we think you’ll be great parents’? Lost in the formality of the system. So congratulate yourselves. Tell your people and hug and cheer. You’ve come a long way, baby and approval here general means formal approval will follow. This is a huge step forward and panel approval is a strong vote of confidence by people who have read your whole story.
Final thoughts
The adoption panel is built up during stages 1 and 2 as the big finale at the end of the process, but the reality is that it isn’t the end of the process and therefore isn’t the finale at all.
After the panel comes the wait for final approval, then the whole matching process with a matching panel. so though ‘panel’ (application panel) is important, it is not the end.
It is scary but it shouldn’t be. There is actually nothing to be done once you get there, you’ve already put all the hard work into the application and your Social Worker has already asked you all the questions the panel might later ask.
Their is no failing panel – only a ‘please go away, address these things, then come back to us’. If you don’t get a passing vote from the 5 panelists, then you will receive a list of things to be worked on, courses to do, things to fix on the house to go away and do. Then you’ll try again.
I hope this helped demystify ‘panel’ as actually a fairly straight forward Teams call with a likely pass outcome. It isn’t the end of the application process, but it is an important milestone on the way to forming your family.
