This August marked the official 3 year mark since Lance and I started our adoption journey. I don't really write about it because there hasn't been any new news to share with people. I now have just a couple of new things to share.
For everyone who doesn't know, in August of 2006, Lance and I attended an orientation for prospective foster and adoptive parents though the county we live in. We wanted to move the process along as quickly as possible, so we quickly signed up for the required Pride classes that took place over three consecutive weekends that September. We also signed up for countless other classes that were offered that were not required. We met several times (both together and seperately) with our social worker, Susan, and finally finished the homestudy in April of 2007. At that time, Susan told us that the only thing we had to do then was to wait for her to call and let us know that we are being placed and that the longest that anyone had to wait to be placed with a child was one year.
That was two and a half years ago.
Over the last couple of years, Lance and I have checked in with her occasionally to see if anything had changed. She had told us that there was no news if we didn't hear from her, but we called her occasionally anyway. We continued to go to classes and keep our CPR up to date. We never wanted there to be anything that would stand in our way if a little one came along that would be a good match for our family. Susan always assured us that we were a fantastic family and she always seemed eager to want to place a child with us.
Last month, I finally reached my breaking point, or so I thought. I knew that I needed to get some answers because I still could not figure out why we were not placed yet. I called Susan one early morning a few weeks ago and left her a voice message. She called me back just a short while later that morning and left me a message. I wasn't able to call her back during my work hours so I called her back as soon as I got home that afternoon. She told me that there have been a lot of changes within the homefinding department. They are really pushing reunification with birth families and relatives whenever possible, which meant that there were less children in the system and more families waiting to be placed. She told me that she didn't have the chance to put our file out on the table at matching meetings very often because of the nature of the situation (meaning the child would only be in foster care and probably wouldn't need a permanent home) or because there simply wasn't any children to place.
Lance and I started going to some fall classes a few weeks ago. At these classes, there is a lady named Cathy who has definitely claimed a place in my heart. That may sound really cheesy, but she has been an incredible support and advocate for us. She is the Interim Social Services Director for the county. We've known her for quite a while now, as she is the contact for most of the classes that we take, so we see her almost every time we go to one. When we reminded her of how long we have been waiting to be placed, it was as if she made it her mission to get some answers for us. She emailed me twice in a week and told me that she had spoken to Susan for us and even went into our file to try to find out what was going on. As it turns out, Lance and I weren't even officially licensed by the county until October 2008. I'm pretty sure that when Cathy told me that, my jaw hit the floor. I asked her why in the world it took a year and a half AFTER we finished the homestudy to get licensed. She told us that it most likely was a hold up with one of our references. (The county requires that you provide them with 4 references. We did this along with all of our other paperwork before the homestudy was complete). I still don't understand how things could have been held up for that long and I especially don't understand why we never knew about it, but it happened. I thought that we had been waiting for two and a half years to be placed. It looks like we've only been eligible for a year. I still just don't get it.
I guess part of the reason is because of the budget cuts and a very overworked social services and homefinding department in the county. They went from having 8 homefinding social workers down to 3. Luckily our social worker made the cuts, but it means that she has a larger caseload now. I found out last week that Susan has a caseload of 200, which seems like an insanely daunting number to me.
I just really hope that we stay on her radar and that she doesn't forget about us. It has been a rollercoaster of a ride that hasn't even really started yet. Lance and I have had some pretty emotional days, some very relaxed days and everythig in between. I'm really, really hoping that this happens soon.
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