[MilehighDad]

Robin,
No worries about being a bother, we all have the choice of whether to answer or not! And, since I'm answering, clearly it isn't a bother.

I can assure you, your county in California has an office for dealing with out-of-state adoptions, it just isn't very closely linked to the child services offices. The formal paperwork agreement will be under ICPC, which stands for Interstate Compact for the Placement of Children. Your county will have an ICPC office which must eventually route and approve any ICPC agreement, however they will be of no help to you now. It is also not unusual that your worker in county services has no experience whatsoever with out-of-state adoptions.

If you are matched with the child, the AZ adoptions worker will fill out a form for the ICPC agreement and begin routing a large packet of information from her county, to the AZ state office, to the CA state office, and down to your county office. In our last adoption, this packet was 250 pages! Usually, the only information she will need from you is in your homestudy. But, the documents get sent through many hands, so it will take a while to get in place, usually 2-3 months.

Once the agreement is in place, it will enable a number of things to happen across state lines. AZ will authorize medicaid to be paid to you, then CA has to set it up. AZ will send payments for foster care maintenance, and this may be sent directly to you or indirectly through CA. A CA worker will be arranged to conduct regular home visits and report back to AZ on your child's well-being.

Oh, and the "wonderful" part of ICPC is if something goes badly wrong and the states have a dispute - the lowest entity that can be consulted to settle the dispute is the US Supreme Court. Needless to say, you hope that everyone can reach an agreement, because I don't think the court has ever heard such a dispute, the agreement just never gets approved and you never get your child placed. (Yes, the "wonderful" comment was sarcastic!)

I hope you get matched, it does sound like they are moving AMAZINGLY fast. Our daughter's worker stopped collecting homestudies on May 24th and they didn't have a matching meeting until September 22nd! Four months to read homestudies, select four, and schedule a meeting! We almost went crazy waiting.

If you do hear anything, certainly let us know!