Waiting to hear...about the fence

We are still waiting to hear the verdict of Mr Chief Manager regarding our garden. And whether the dangers of sharing it with the neighbours must be eliminated before we could be entrusted with children. He was going to get back to us a week ago.

In the meantime, a friend put an enquiry about shared gardens on an adoption association discussion board. Someone replied and said that they share a garden and it was never even raised as an issue when they were being assessed. I have copied and pasted this information into an email for the manager today, which also served to remind him that we haven't heard anything.

In the meantime, Bohemian Rhapsody - as it always should have been...

To bake or not to bake...

..that is the question.


Church Without Walls is not meeting tomorrow afternoon in our usual churchy sort of way.  Instead, we are helping out at a community event.  We're running the cafe part, serving tea, coffee and cake.  


Usually, I'm good for a couple of home made cakes.  This week, however, I have been fighting off a medley of viruses and infections.  So am feeling somewhat weary.  


So do I bake, or do we just sell the shop bought ones we have?


How lovely to have a life so uncomplicated at this moment and so free of trouble that the only decision to make is whether to bake cakes or not!

Doughnuts

I made doughnuts yesterday to take to church.  I usually take cake of some kind, and we hadn't got loads of stuff in the house, but I reckoned we'd probably got doughnut ingredients, so got a recipe online.  Then Andy came and joined me and got excited about the idea of injecting jam into them.  

Andy found a syringe but we discovered that jam with fruit in it just clogged it up.  Custard, however, was perfect.  Hey presto, custard doughnuts for church!  

Late night musings

It's been a funny week. I've been fighting a cold all week, and have felt horribly ill for most of it. Managed to get really stressed out last week about the assessment process, and this ridiculous ongoing saga of the alleged unsuitability of our garden. Which is what has contributed to the complete collapse of my immune system (OK - I exaggerate) this week and turned me into a mucus producing, washed out mess.

For anyone new to the saga, we have a lovely big garden which we share with our neighbours. According to our social services department, this poses a huge risk to any potential adopted children and the only way they can currently see of managing this risk is for us to put a fence up. We are now waiting for the verdict of the social services manager, who came to look at the situation earlier this week.

It all feels a bit odd really. By the end of our meeting on Wednesday, I was feeling very sure that the manager who visited was not going to budge on the issue of the fence. And feeling really low about the whole thing. Desperately sad about probably being pushed into dividing up our shared garden.

Since them, I've gathered more information and advice, and written him a somewhat lengthy email which makes it very clear that two different advisors from the best respected adoption organisation in the country would not feel we needed to separate our garden from the neighbours.

I would hate to have to put a fence up. It probably sounds a bit petty really. But the thing is, we love our garden. We burnt the fence on the barbeque, sat in our neighbour's garden, several years ago. And then set about creating a shared space. The result has been an absolute joy. We've had loads of parties in the garden. Lots of children have enjoyed playing in it. The thought of ending the thing we worked so hard to create, saddens me greatly. I hate the idea that our kids would miss out on the garden which has brought so much joy to so many other children (we actually only 'own' a very small portion of the garden - the rest belongs to the neighbour who so kindly shares it with us).

The really frustrating thing is that there is no good reason to put up a fence. We've had advice from independent experts saying that it's not necessary. And we've suggested very workable ways of dealing the potential 'risk'. So if they do decide that they don't want to continue with our assessment in the absence of a fence, it will be in the face of a great deal of evidence and common sense.

From an objective point of view, they really should be expected to come back to us and say they are happy for us to continue with our current arrangement. My experience over the last 2.5 years, however, has been that whenever social services have decided something, they have been completely and utterly immoveable.

So we're waiting. Hoping that for the first time in this process someone changes their mind and adopts a more enlightened approach. And hoping not to be shopping for fences this time next week.

Conversations with BAAF and my Mum

It's great to talk - as British Telecom used to say in their adverts. A couple of sane conversations have helped put me back on an even keel. Hooray!

BAAF, the British Association for Adoption and Fostering would be regarded as The Oracle on all matters adoption related in the UK. They provide advice and consultancy to parents and professionals alike and provided me with a sensible conversation this morning. The advisor I spoke to couldn't understand why the social work team are seeing our garden as such a problem. She thinks they are making a mountain out of a molehill. I told her all the things we've suggested to manage the shared garden and her response was:

If you've given them those particular solutions, I can't see why they're being so sticky about it. It seems very odd.

She evidently felt that it was the social workers, and not us, who were being unreasonable. I know we knew that already, but there is nothing like hearing from an expert to make you feel better.

The second sanity breathing conversation was with my Mum. Though she experiences similar infuriating interactions with social services, trying to get services for my sister, who has learning difficulties. It makes me very cross that the people who should be relieving the burden and making her feel helped and supported are a major added cause of stress in the already challenging role of looking after my sister.

I have emailed the manager who visited yesterday with the fairly blunt views of the BAAF advisor to aid him in his deliberations about our garden. We shall see what he comes back with...

Sitting on the fence....

Well, we had The Social Work Manager round today. To see the garden for himself and to discuss the matter of the fence with us in person. I'm not sure 'discuss' is quite the right verb in this context, but still.

The SWM looked at the garden in the way a loss adjuster looks at your car before declaring it a write off, and said things like "well, it's a lot more open plan than I thought it would be," and "this is really designed for adults, this garden, if I'm honest. It's not really a children's garden."

I spoke about all the ways in which we could manage the "risks" of sharing a garden. And to be honest, I could tell it was falling on deaf ears. He's gone away to think about it. But I know that they are most likely to say that we can't proceed if we don't put a fence up.

I feel utterly powerless. If we had kids, and for their wellbeing we needed to put a fence up, we'd do it. Of course we would. But this isn't going to benefit anybody at all. Quite the opposite. But there doesn't seem to be any way of having a logical, reasonable, conversation with them about it. It's about making social services feel more comfortably about their box-ticking exercise.

I feel angry, upset and powerless.

The saga of the fence continues...

Tomorrow we are to be graced with the presence of the social worker's manager's manager to discuss the matter of the fence. They've seen our risk assessment. I am guessing that it wouldn't take a personal visit from a senior manager to tell us it was fine.

Good to know that the time and resources of our public institutions is being put to good use.

Thought you might like these fence quotes:

“Don't ever take a fence down until you know why it was put up.”
Robert Frost

“The wide world is all about you; you can fence yourselves in, but you cannot forever fence it out.”
JRR Tolkein