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Hi, I just wanted to say, that there is a long wait for everyone, foster and adoptive parents alike! It took us a year just to get our foster care license. Then about 6 months till we got our first placement. The workers (that I have worked with in MI) are so overloaded with work that they function in crisis mode. The most urgent cases or most "verbal" people get taken care of first. If you are quiet then you just get shoved down further in the pile.
I don't know if this is the same for all workers but mine were very overworked and undertrained. I didn't know that the agency lost our request to adopt form for our daughters adoption until her therapist asked why we changed our minds about adopting her!
We called right away and they finally found it in the desk of a worker that had quit. After that I tried to be very visible to the people I was working with. I lived close to the agency so I dropped off and picked up most of the paperwork, just to have a physical presence there. I called every time I dropped off somethine also if I didn't see my worker face to face. We started attending all of the functions and most of the meetings.
You will probably run into someone who quits, so make yourself known to the new person as soon as you can. I would just make a hello call and very quickly run over what our case was. That way she remembered me before she got started cleaning up the pile her predecessor left. I don't know if they every catch up.
I learned this all from a bio mom. She took it to extremes by walking into their offices unnannounced and calling daily but by golly she got what she wanted!
Can you imagine what a job it must be to not only deal with months of backlog but peoples emotions and lives too? You couldn't pay me enough to do it. My hat is off to the workers that really try.
Waiting is the hardest part. I believe that I had to wait 5 years to adopt for a reason. If I had been able to adopt our other foster kids then we never would have been able to adopt our Jessica. She was our 7th kid and she needed us so much it couldn't be just luck that she was the one who became free for adoption.
We are reopening our license again so we are just beginning the waiting again too.
Good Luck,
Paula
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