Foster Carers Blog: The Day we went to Panel

After six months of soul searching and exploring questions and answers we finally received our date for panel, September 16th.  Our link worker asked us if we would like to attend on this day and we accepted because we felt it important to conclude the process by meeting face to face with the panel of people who had read our form F, which we had called our “this is your life” report.

September 16th arrived and we collected our link worker on the way to our meeting with the Panel. We had time to discuss our anxiety and concerns about possible questions that would arise; we received great assurance that everything would be fine. After we arrived and took our seats outside the room with “Fostering approval board” on the door, my heart started to beat faster but my husband maintained a cool composure.  We could hear the rattle of tea cups inside the room, it was only a few minutes but it felt like an hour.  And then our moment arrived, we were called in and before us was a very large oval table with a panel of 9 women and one man.  The Chairperson introduced everyone after our link worker proceeded to introduce us and explained in a very professional manner who we were and why we were here, then the Chairperson asked us a few questions like “Why is now the right time for you and your family to start fostering”? , “because of the ages of our youngest children, are you really ready for EPC”? all of these questions for us were easy to answer as we knew we were doing the right thing and this was our time.

Nobody from the Panel apart from the Chairperson asked us any questions and our interview was over within 30 minutes. The Panel thanked us for wanting to attend as so few people attend on the day of panel and we left the building thinking we would have to wait at least a week for a reply but we had no sooner left the grounds of the building then there was a voice mail on our link worker’s phone that we had PASSED.

After this experience we would highly recommend that everyone should attend the day of panel even if not required to do so, as it completes the final chapter to the new beginning of fostering.

A short time has now passed and we are busy with our first placement but we plan next year to attend our review panel as we would like to update them on how busy we are and the wonderful support we received from Five Rivers.