Arrived before T as expected given he was coming straight from work. Was met by one social worker who took me down to where we were meeting and introduced me to the other 2 involved in running the course – 2 from the adoption team and 1 from adoption support team. Several people were already in the room and in the end it turned out to be 14 of us. Variety of background – two couples with birth children, and at least two who had attempted IVF as I found out talking to them. Two other couples from the same place as us – and indeed one couple who live a stone’s throw away.
We started off (after toilets, fire exit and introduction to what the course was about) being asked to split into pairs and talk to someone we didn’t know and to find out 4 facts about them. The guy I talked to was a different background from me – married 4 years, been through 3 failed IVF attempts, worked in his family used car business and his wife was a beautician. Then it was onto a short quiz – some of which T & I could answer and some we got wrong – like the number of children in care in England (hadn’t spotted the key word England), and how many were adopted from care last year which we overestimated. Then we went on to talk about our hopes and fears for the course – lots of hopes and a smaller set of fears – many of which we had in common which was reassuring. Things like isolation, finding ourselves at different points as a couple, being rejected.