Jerome started in his new department when we got back from our holiday, and is so far enjoying the much more relaxed environment.
We finally got allocated a social worker for our adoption process. After hurrying to get in our paperwork as quickly as possible, we had been a bit annoyed to find out that people who handed theirs in later than us had been allocated a social worker more quickly. But I guess we can't do much about it now! Anyway, we had our first interview yesterday (21st) and we think it went ok. We now each have an individual interview with her, and then one last joint interview in a few weeks time. After this the social worker will write a report about us and make a recommendation on whether to approve us for adoption or not.
We have decided to adopt a special needs child (however this is also subject to approval by the social worker). We can be quite specific in what type of special need(s) we are willing to accept, and are only thinking of doing something minor, perhaps something that can be fixed with surgery. Often these medical needs are something that just cannot be afforded to be fixed in China. From talking to others who have adopted SN children, they all agree that the physical SN is not a big deal compared with the emotional needs of the child, and all children have these emotional needs, whether they are physically healthy or not. If we are approved for SN adoption, this will significantly alter the waiting time too, from about 3 years to about 12 to 15 months.