AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH

Two conversations with adoption agencies today. The first was with Birmingham social services, who I accidentally contacted last week, because barnardos (a charity) gave me their number. Their process seems to have extra bureaucracy. You have to go to a meeting about adoption before having the initial meeting with the social worker, then they want a CRB check to ensure we're not criminals, before we start the training. And there seems to be endless different allocation of social workers. And they would want to do a CRB check on our lodgers.
"The lodgers won't be with us if we have children."
"But they are there now."
"Yes, but if we get approved, we won't have lodgers in the house."
"Because they are there now, we would have to investigate them."
Plus they are in Birmingham, which is about an hour away. On the positive side, they're not short of social workers at present.

Then spoke to the Together Trust again. They sounded really positive last week. The guy I spoke to today doesn't want to do anything at all if we're going to Africa in the summer, until after we come back. Because it "would make the process disjointed". Like it's not already. But he seems to think that once we started the process it would be finished fairly quickly, because they are a small organisation.

I know that in a couple of days (or even hours) I will calm down. But right now I want to throw things. I knew someone once who drove to the top of a large hill when feeling like this and screamed. Perhaps it's worth a try. Spoke to Andy who laughed and said that if I'm frustrated by the red tape now, before we've even started the assessment process, just wait until we do. "You're not even on the road of red tape yet." he said. "THAT'S BECAUSE OF ALL THE RED TAPE. I CAN'T GET TO THE ROAD OF RED TAPE BECAUSE OF ALL THE RED TAPE IN THE WAY." I replied calmly.

Why is it that wanting to provide a home for children who need security and love and to be treated like people involves a process that feels so utterly dehumanising? I'm actually looking forward to the assessment process (yes, I know, famous last words) and the training. I think it ought to be good preparation for us. This wandering around in circles is driving me nuts.