mischief28ky,
My last meeting went really great. We filled out our mentor forms and will be assigned to a mentor the day we get officially approved. We signed up for our free membership to the Foster/Adopt Care Organization of KY. We have scheduled Concurrent Placement Adoption Training for July 8th. We took pictures for our foster IDs and got our final paperwork turned in before our homestudy on Friday. I really felt like I was finally seeing progress. So I decided to brave the question that I had been holding to myself about state to state adoption. My social worker had no experience with it and referred me to another social worker attending the meeting. She informed me that if I wanted to I would be able to do this with the interstate contract. She advised me that after my homestudy I can give them my social workers info and if they agree we would be a candidate then they will let our social worker share with us the full information available about the child. Then with the next breathe she let me know that a lot of times other states will play down the disabilities to get a child adopted. She said the profile online may read great and then upon reading the medical file when matched you may find that this disability is life threatening or long term care will be needed for the rest of the child's life. She said 80% of the adoptions from the KY system are from concurrent planning adoptions. That is why I signed up for the last training session that will be offered in my region on this subject. I also signed up for classes in my region from the Adoption Support For Kentucky Organization. All of these will serve as additional training hours for us and we are very interested in adopting. We were pretty much advised to wait and there will be kids right here that I can adopt. So...I guess only time will tell. I have a nursery and a children's room completely ready. I go into both of them daily and spend time just imagining what it will be like to have children in them. I have found several children in a variety of states that I think would be a great match for my family. But...I am not sure now whether or not to believe the website or the social worker's experience. I just don't know. I would love to chat with you more...but I have work to do right now. Feel free to email me anytime:
amyrpatterson@hotmail.com Have a great day!!!! --Amy--