New Social Worker

So physicals are now out of the way. Last evening we met our new social worker. Monica has over 15 years of pre-adoption social work experience. She is very gung ho to get going with this. She thinks are approval should go through any time now and she is working on our Foster Home Application.

She will be the one who helps match us with our future child(ren) We need to send her a good picture of the both of us so that she can make an online profile for us. She is very enthusiastic and says she will really be marketing us heavily. She is quick to respond to emails. I am really hopeful that things will move along quicker now.

Patience

“The keys to patience are acceptance and faith. Accept things as they are, and look realistically at the world around you. Have faith in yourself and in the direction you have chosen.”

This is definitely something I need to work on. I always have. I am a doer...tell me the steps to get what I want and I will do them, no matter how difficult. But waiting...that is another story. This process is really going to help me develop some patience. I heard from my social worker today and the good news is that the Program Supervisor liked my profile and loved our Photo Profile. The bad news is the next step to get approval from the panel can take up to 50 business days.  So we wait... and that is ok, I am just going to have to go with it. 

On another positive note Alex from Portrait Art For Pets and Their People was here today and got started. She is so talented!  Here are a few pictures of the sketches on the wall that she is doing freehand!

She will be coming back tomorrow to start painting!!!!

Hurry Up And Wait

MAPP classes are done, 101 pages of essay questions done, CPR done, home study done,fire inspection done, 2 sets of finger prints done, background checks done, photo profile done...just getting the last of our references together. They get turned in Tuesday and Friday my social worker sits down with the head of CHS to get everything finalized. Once that is done, everything comes back for us to sign and then gets sent up for approval to the state.
After the approval we can start getting bios and go to match events. I am praying we are good to go for the match event on June 11th.
I am feeling pretty good about how quickly our process has gone. So many in our class had started back in the fall and still haven't gotten as far as we have. And there are others who have not even been assigned a social worker. Alot of the process depends on how quickly and thoroughly we complete our parts.
Cris & I have been on top of everything. The family that came in to talk to us took 2 years to complete the process, but they were slow with getting things back and also they wanted a young child, they ended up with 2 young children.

I am glad to have my Saturdays back, but I will miss getting to see Leigh Ann, Jerel, Michelle & Mark. OK, not too much since we are getting together Friday for dinner. It will be interesting to see how all of our searches go. Both couples are interested in out of state adoption. We are not. It will be hard enough on the child to start with move to a new family and school. There is a good chance that the child will have siblings and I would really like to maintain a relationship between our child and any siblings as best we can.
I know it is healthier for the child that way.

Cris was talking to someone at a wedding last night and told them that we would be adopting 1 or 2 children. That is cool to know he is open to a second child down the road.Cris says the next year or two. Sometimes of the biological family has another child that gets relinquished to Foster Care they will try to get the adoptive family of the one sibling to adopt the second child. That would be great too!

Well, I probably won't have much to write for a little bit...but then things will be popping!!!!

First Meeting

Well, the first meeting definitely went better than I had anticipated. We met with Ms. Baptiste from Children's Home Society. She was great. She normally does post adoption work and educates. However due to a medical leave she is filling in this roll. For this I am glad. First we filled out a bunch of paperwork and then she conducted a thorough interview of Cris & I. We talked about our childhoods, our families  and our relationship what we like to do ect.... We discussed what we were looking for and what we expected from this process. Ms. Baptiste was very helpful and I can tell that she is definately looking out for everyone's best interest. She spoke very candidly about issues that some children had but she was also positive about the good things. I can tell that things went well for us. She stated she really enjoyed spending time with us. She liked that we had the dogs as dogs are very theraputic for these children and she stated that homes with dogs have a much easier time adjusting.
She was also honest with us in saying that we need to be the ones to question everything and really do our research on any potential children. Talk to their foster parents, get their histories, if they have had multiple foster homes find out why. I am hoping she can stay with us. But there is a chance that we may get assigned to someone that does this all the time. I really like that she is the one that does the follow up and helps to get families to blend. I can tell that she is committed to this. She was telling us a story of how she stayed with one family for 4 years ( which is much longer than normal) I really like that about her.


From this meeting Cris & I decided that a girl between 3-8 would be preferred but we would be open to a boy.

I walked away feeling great about the first meeting. Next step we do finger printing and FBI/SBI background checks. Then we start our what they call M.A.P.P training. They teach you how to deal with the challenges that children in foster care have.
After that ends in May we will have our home study and then get matched.

They Called!

We got a call today to set up our appointment for our first meeting with a Social Worker!! Yea!!!
My nerves are going nuts! So many thoughts running through my head! This is going to be a wild ride!

Children's Home Society of NC

After a lot of discussion Cris & I decided to go with adopting a little bit older of a child. Around 5 years old.
We have chosen to work with Childrens Home Society. They have received our application and are running background checks. In about another week or so we will be assigned to our social worker. I am so super excited!