Still waiting...

Nothing really interesting to say, just getting bored waiting to hear from the MCoNZ about my registration.
I know that realistically it'll be weeks yet till I hear but I'm so impatient its going to drive me mad, I just hope all my extra bits and pieces of paperwork have got there ok.

Thanks DHL

Well after my concerns about my midwifery stuff ever reaching New Zealand I've made use of the DHL tracker and...its there, delivered and signed for!!

Oh and Ive also had email contact with my new prospective midwifery manager in Hawkes Bay who has confirmed that they are always looking for staff and she's sure (as long as I'm not a total fraud) that they would be able to offer me a job and they're happy to do so knowing that I might not actually be there for >6 months. So, now I just need to wait till my registration stuff gets passed and I can put in an official application.

Well its on its way...

So today saw all my midwifery registration paperwork finally getting sent off to New Zealand (after my lovely GP signed my medical certificate for free).
As a word of warning to anyone else who thinks that using DHL's quick point counters in WH Smiths is a good plan..think again! In I go with my pile of paperwork to be sent off, I find the counter and the sparse amount of instructions and after a few minutes work it out for myself and take the whole lot to the till. Then the fun starts, only one member of staff that's on is trained to process DHL parcels so off they go to find her. She arrives with a pile of paperwork and a slightly scared look on her face. After lots and lots of flicking through instructions and asking if I know how things work finally 25 minutes later I'm finally paying for my package to be sent off.

So, its gone but I'm not in any way confident that it'll actually get there. But at least its away and just my uni transcript to be sent and all the supporting paperwork will be sent too.

Now the waiting begins...

Finally

So, finally my police check has arrived and I'm officially not a criminal (always good to know!)
Now I need to get hold of a solicitor to get some certified copies of some documents, get an appointment with my GP to sign my medical certificate and get my uni to complete my course transcript...oh yeah and get my referees to sign my references. Once all thats done and I gather together £500 I can get my midwifery registration sent off.

Things are moving...slowly, but at least its movement.

Just to add...

Yeah, forgot to mention in my past post that my OH's redundancy request was turned down (why ask people to volunteer for redundancy then refuse it...hmmm!?)
But, its not changing out plans just making them slightly less straight forward financially (redudancy pacakge would have made a BIG difference to our bank balances!) but we're carrying on anyway.

Hmmm

Well, things are on the move...kind of. Application for my police check has been sent (and received according to the Royal Mail tracker which I don't have a hige amount of faith in!)so shoudl take a couple of weeks to get processed. Once thats back, and I finish writing my competency stuff I can send my Midwifery Registration away.
But....Im having a wobble about New Zealand. I really shouldn't read all the negative stuff on forums etc but when there's so much of it its a bit hard to ignore. I want to be sure that NZ is the right destination for us (cause we're definetly going somewhere!!) before we start forking out the serious £££ for registrations and visa's.
Mind you, we have said we'd go for a year and see how it goes and I'd rather go for a year and decide its rubbish than not go at all. Maybe I should just 'un-bookmark' those forums!

Paperwork mountain

Ok, so there's still no news about the redundancy but we've decided to get the paperwork underway anyway. First things first and I need to apply for my NZ Midwifery Registration. I need to get my registration sorted out first so I can then apply for jobs before completing my actual visa application.

The whole registration process doesn't look too bad until you see all the additional paperwork that's needed to go along with the initial forms. Here's the process...

NZ Midwifery Registration - not only does this include the paperwork for the registration itself (which is actually pretty easy stuff) but also involves completing a supporting document to show evidence that I can meet the NZ Midwifery competencies.
To go along with the registration documents I also have to sort out;
1) a police certificate (this is different to a disclosure as I've now discovered and comes from the Association of Chief Police Officers
2) verification of my registration from the NMC
3) transcript of my degree course from uni
4) a copy if my portfolio and CV (best actually get my portfolio up to date then eh!)
5) certified (by an actual legal person) copies of my birth certificate and passport
6) 2 references
7) a medical certificate
8) cheque for £500ish

So far I've managed to complete the forms to request my police certificate, copy the proof of address info that they need and find my passport that needs photocopied. Still need to sort out a passport pic and get it signed by a 'professional' person (i.e the first colleague that crosses my path at work tomorrow!) and sort out the £35 cheque to go with that lot.

As you can see this is just the start of the paperwork and its pretty full on already and I've got a feeling its only gonna get worse...

First post, a wee bit of background...

Ok, so this is my first post. I cant promise to update this on a hugely frequent basis, solely because the whole emigration process doesnt happen too quickly but I will update with any relevant happenings (or anything else I fancy posting really!)

A wee bit of background info then. Im a midwife, recently qualified in 2008. Before that I was a learning disability nurse for 10 long years. My other half is a BT engineer.

Although I was lucky enough to secure a job when I qualified my one year contract is about to run out and there's no funds in the budget to extend it so, come Jan '10 I'm unemployed with no sign of any job prospects. I've considered NZ for a few years but now my OH is on board too so we're starting the process of applying for visas and my NZ midwifery registration.

At the moment we're waiting to hear if my OH has been successful in his application for voluntary redundancy from his job with BT. The outcome of that will affect our timescales but not the final plans.

So, right now we're kinda in limbo, but in the main we're...
-Doing lots of research into cost of living in NZ and reading some scary posts on other forums about how high it is!!
-Checking out house rentals, houses in NZ are an 'interesting' bunch (I'll post some links later on to show you what I mean)
-Job hunting, having a choice is a major novelty!
-Printing off the huge amount of paperwork that we need to fill in, firstly for my midwifery registration and then for the visa itself.

I'll update this as things happen (or dont happen that should do) and will any major news (and probably also just when I want a rant or moan about the whole process.

Lx