[Biffer1997]

GRRR!!! It makes me wonder why anyone does this! Here is our plight..any and all advice would be helpful!

My husband and I are licensed to adopt through our county agency in OH. We recently were matched with a child in the IN foster care system. We have had pre-placement visits, and as far as we know, the Interstate Compact is rolling along.

Our caseworker has told us that we could be approved to be foster parents by "changing something in the paperwork". Fine. Today I called her to check on if she got the forms she needed, etc. and she said she did not think that we were going to be able to get licensed to foster because it is not an in-state child. She was awaiting a call from her supervisor and was also going to call IN to see if they could place the child as an pre-adoptive placement, not as a foster child.

Our caseworker called back a little while ago, and said our county will not license us to foster bc we are taking an out of state child that is a non-relative. The child's caseworker in IN and her supervisor said that we had to be foster parents before they could place her. GRRRR!!! So now who knows what is going to happen!

You would think that somewhere in either state, someone would know how to handle an IN to OH adoption as we live 30 minutes from the border of IN! Our caseworker did say that the two state's policies are so different that this will be very difficult.

Also, because we live so close to the border, we would be able to take her to IN for medical appointments, etc so IN will only give her an IN Medicaid card. Now for us that is fine, but what if we lived on the other side of the state and could not go to IN? Our CW said this is Indiana's show and they make all the decisions.

Has anyone had any experience with anything like this? Because it is so late, I left a message with my CW's supervisor (and am prepared to go to the FAIR board if necessary), I also tried calling the child's caseworker but the office is closed for the day. I also left a message with the regional SNAP specialist in IN.

HELP!! What rights do we have?