FINALLY!!!

The day we've been waiting for has finally arrived!  Our homestudy has begun!  

We had originally been told that the homestudy could be done at the same time we were taking our training classes, finishing up both at the same time in early August.  However, the social worker who told us that left the job in June and no replacement was hired until mid September.  She then had to work on other cases before starting on our homestudy.

We met with our social worker last Tuesday in her office, bringing with us a stack of paperwork to turn in.  First, she read down the list of what we needed for our foster care licensure.  Then we started on the list for adoption.  It turns out we had already filled out much of what we needed.  We were able to fill out a few things in her office and we also left with a list of about 8 things we needed to work on before the home visits were completed.  Some of the things we still needed we had never been told were required!  We had already gotten 5 references for foster care, now we needed 3 references for adoption. 

We are quite impressed with this social worker, as we met with her on Tuesday and by Friday our 3 references had already received the letter with details on what they needed to do.  We spent the rest of the week finishing our Autobiographies (we had already done a Documentation of Family History for foster care), filling out our medical forms, getting our birth certificates copied, and writing a long distance evacuation plan.  The last item to turn in will be our NC Kids Registration Form.  This is what they will use to match us with children.  We are taking our time on this because there is a section where you check off all of the "conditions" you are willing to accept in a child.  The less you are willing to accept, the harder it will be to find a match.  We are not equipped to handle a child with a terminal illness or severe physical disability, but we can handle developmental delays, learning disabilities, ADD, etc as many of the kids available for adoption will have several issues such as those.  The good thing about this form is that even if we say we are willing to accept a child with a certain issue, we can always refuse the match if we find we can't handle it based on the information in the child's file. 

Today is our first home visit for the homestudy and next Tuesday is our (hopefully) last home visit.  We are almost ready, with just a few little things to do.  We're all a little nervous (well, I'm sure Rich isn't!), mostly because we don't know what to expect during this phase.  We know we will answer any questions the social worker has from our autobiographies, we'll show her around the house and then she'll meet with each of us individually to ask more questions. 


And then comes more waiting.  We've been told that once the homestudy is complete and all of the information is gathered together and submitted, it is a 1-3 month wait to become licensed foster parents.  On the other hand, we could be approved to adopt within a few days of the paperwork being submitted.  I don't quite understand that time difference, but while we wait for our license, we will start looking at children available for adoption and submit our information to their social workers and go from there.  If we are not a match to any child by the time we are licensed foster parents, we will start in foster care and see if anyone becomes available for adoption.  We are fairly flexible about the age and race of the child/children we want to adopt, so we think our chances of a match are better than most.  But, we also realize this part could still be a long process!