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Adoption Community Information
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| THIS TIME LAST YEAR: August 2004 |
Date Posted: 08-29-2005 at 07:27 AM |
| Our agency was having their monthly support group meeting. This time would be fun, we were having a picnic outdoors. I remember clearly standing there and helping set out food when our social worker at the time, Sellina, said to me "We think we've found a match. I'm waiting on more information to come in." This was it. After four months of waiting, would this be the placement? We'd had to say no before. Mainly when a child was not legally free for adoption, since we were only considering those children who were legally free. See, we have to be a foster home for 6 months to adopt out of the foster care system here. So we were interested in adoption, which meant we were a little choosier about who we would consider. We turned down the three year old boy who was still having visits with his birth parents. The birth parents were determined to make the TPR as long and as grueling as possible. There was the brother and sister who we had to say no to because the girl's disabilities made it impossible for her to get around our house on her own. There were the two brothers who both had FAS, and the developmental delays that the youngest would experience were unable to be determined. We weren't sure if he'd learn to walk, speak, or eat on his own. So here we were, standing at the resource parent appreciation picnic, hearing the news. We had a wonderful time at the picnic. We figured, no sweat, we'll go home and Sellina will call back this week with more info. We should've known it wasn't going to be as easy as all that. |
| September 2004 |
Date Posted: 08-29-2005 at 09:48 AM |
| After the picnic, I began to wonder if maybe I'd imagined the entire conversation. I turned into one of those people who worries about missing a call (we don't own a cell phone) and would try to squelch the urge to call and check the machine, or call and pester my social worker, who I knew was waiting for the information to pass on and was calling repeatedly. It was the September Support Group meeting before we got more information. Nothing much really, the page from the Aareva book, the same info you can find online. The first thing that struck me about the child was his uncanny resemblance to my husband. I mean seriously... same hair and eye color, even the same general facial shape. We'd said from the start race was not an issue and in fact expected to adopt interracially. Our potential match, however, was a dead ringer for my husband. A few quick lines. Sounded like a lot of behavior. A psych. evaluation had been sent to our social worker. After reading it, she decided it was best for us to meet with the child's worker and talk as a group about the information contained in the document. Later, I could see why this was a good idea. The document presented this child as some sort of sociopath. The social workers representing A were miles more helpful than the evaluation was... they were able to cite specific examples of the behaviors listed. We talked to our social worker. We took a week to think it over. after a lot of mulling, we decided to proceed. We told our social worker and she was thrilled. Now came the next step. We were almost there!! Well.... not quite. |
| October 2004 |
Date Posted: 08-29-2005 at 02:25 PM |
| After a few weeks of phone tag, it was determined that A's social worker, the social worker previously on his case, and a worker through DePaul Family Services who was ALSO assigned to the case wanted to see our home and visit us at our home. At this point, people who'd heard about their kids WAY after us had been placed already. We were beginning to get frustrated. I should point out that A's agency is located a 4 hour drive from our home, so coordinating a time we could all be available was the main reason everything was taking so long. We were ready to get moving, though, and were becoming increasingly impatient. There was a 2-3 week lag between meetings and when we would hear our next step. To make matters more complicated, they were being exceedingly cautious with A because he'd had multiple placements and one disruption. His workers, understandably, wanted to be CERTAIN this would work before moving A again. It was October when the home visit was set. This was of course the week we discovered the neighbor had a rat living under their porch who was availing itself of our birdfeeders. My secret fear was right as the social worker looked out the window, this **** rat would come out and make a huge display of its presence. We finally saw photos of A. We talked more about his history. We gave a tour of the house, and we were told they'd be in touch. GREAT!! This meant we'd be meeting him soon! Right? RIGHT? Well......... maybe not. |
| November 2004 |
Date Posted: 08-30-2005 at 10:10 AM |
| You guessed it... there was a "Next Step" and it still did not involve meeting A in person. We were invited to make the 4 hour drive to Bedford, VA to attend A's treatment team meeting. There we met the CASA worker. The GAL was out of town. We met with the three social workers we'd already met, plus three workers from the agency the foster family was through, and the foster mom called in on the phone. The entire thing was, to say the least, confusing. We got information we'd not heard about. We couldn't tell if we should believe the foster mom, the file, or the social workers. And if we were GOING to believe a social worker, which one? There were six involved, not counting the ones representing our agency, who weren't even there! I walked away with my head spinning. Something was wrong here, but where did the fault lie? Was it with the foster parents? The System? The child? Us? I walked out of the office feeling angry and numb. My husband and I spent the next week sorting through our feelings. We finally were given the opportunity to read the psych eval and were even in more emotional turmoil after reading it. The child on paper bore no resemblance to the child we'd been told about. We spent many an hour on the phone with our agency, looking up terms online, and talking things over. After a week, we decided we'd still be interested in going through with it. We were ready to meet him. Problem is, that took a little longer than we anticipated. |
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