[mamasoon]

This week it will be 2 months since our last meeting with our caseworker. In that time, we have had one message from her, after my husband sent her a fax, where she told us she was still writing our narrative.

ok, I realize patience is a virtue and all but my heart is about to burst. We are so ready to be parents and we have so much to give and we feel like this was the path to take, so why why why am I starting to feel very UN-patient? How do you not think about it? I had myself convinced that after 6 years of Infertility and all that goes with that, that it would be a breeze to handle this waiting and uncertainty, that I would not think about it every day. I assure you that I have not gone off the deep end, its quite possibly the PMS. hahaha.

Please advise me if possible on how you made it and what you think would help me.

thank you in advance,
Kathy

[kellsbells]

My husband & I filled out the application for special needs adoption in January 2003. The home study was not completed by our caseworker until June and we are still waiting for any match to go further than a possibility. We are becoming very discouraged by the whole system.

[J.Ro]

I was approved in Sept. of this year, still waiting, a few profiles have been sent my way but they weren't the right matches.

I too feel sad, impatient, and ready for my child.

[sues250]

The waiting is the hardest part. It will happen my best advise it to regularly touch base with your social worker. After my homestudy was finally done I was very proactive in the search and would meet with the social worker every 2-3 weeks to see what responses she recieved. I also would call and check on any kids I could. Some states will only talk with social worker. I had my homestudy out for more then 50 kids at any one time.
I saw my daughter on the internet and called myself. If I was not so active looking I would have waited much longer then the year and half I did. The other advice I would have for you is join a support group for adoption. They will help with the wait and maybe be contacts for other kids. Best of luck.

[mamasoon]

Thank you for your thoughts.
to Kellsbells and JRO, I am sorry that you are in this rut also. I find myself getting very discouraged. I did call my caseworker again on Friday and she told me that our homestudy was with the person who retypes it for her. I kind of got the impression that we are on the back burner, they are trying to get the foster parents approved first. We had all of our stuff completed before the end of classes and at the end of our last home meeting, there still had not been one foster family with all of their paperwork done. (This was 2 months after classes). I understand the need to get people approved and get the foster homes approved but I don't think either situation is more important than the other. We are all in it for the children. Oh well, I will stop whining now and get back in line.

thanks for listening,
Kathy

[Fynn]

Hi,

Please forgive me, but as someone who is just starting the process of adopting a waiting child, all this talk of being ignored by social workers, horrendous waiting times and the like is rather demoralizing. Is this kind of obstruction endemic with all states, are there a few that are simply underfunded, is there some way to proactively kick the system in the butt, so to speak? Is there, in fact, any good news about the process of adopting a waiting child? Any help - or simply encouragement - would be greatly appreciated.

Adam

[Peggy]

Waiting times can vary dramatically from person to person within a state (and from state to state). Keep on top of things. I worked through a private agency that worked with the state. I found this helpful, as I had a social worker that was assigned to my case, and looking for matches.

[donna v]

kathy,
what you wrote sounds just like us. this is what i did. i called the adoption specialist every other monday morning. i said i don't want to be a pest, but i am looking for my babies. after about 3 or 4 times, she would answer the phone "hi donna, got that fire under my butt?" we would laugh, but in reality i knew i would not give up and so did she. she was either going to get me a placement or she was going to keep hearing from me. pick and choose your battles i always say. i realize fostering is important too, but i am for getting these kids placed in permanant homes and out of the system. keep in touch with me - i will tell you what i know. i took classes in july, didn't hear anything forever, then got word on my boys last week. got give up - keep the fire burning.
donna

[HappyMomAnna]

Yep, this is the hard time... We turned in our paprework on 2/7/02, homestudy was not done until 8/02 we sent in 60 requests for more info on children....we past on several with greater needs we felt we could not handle..... but on 1/10/03 we brought home aour 5 and one-year old!!!!
Once it happens it happens really FAST!!!! I mean Really FAST!!!
You are in the hard time....but I will tell you when the HARDEST time actually will be........once you have been selected and you know who your children are it will take every bone in your body not to run out and get the child.... We sadly had to wait all the way through CHRISTMAS! Talk about a big bummer but in the end it was all wourth it and now we sit back and wonder why it feels like we have been parents for YEARS!

[Fynn]

I really appreciate the encouragement, and the advice. From the sounds of things, the best thing that we can do is just keep hounding the social worker(s) (in a nice, polite way, of course), be patient, and expect everything suddenly to fall in to place and be rushed off our feet. Does anyone have any other suggestions for helping to 'nudge' social workers - whether it is to reply to our initial enquiries about a particular child, or to push the process along once we've found a child that we, at least, feel is our child?

Thanks,

Adam

[sues250]

The best advise I can give is Please don't set yourself up for heartbreak and feel that any one child is it until they say it is. It is so hard not to say this is the one and wait and wait just to finally hear they have already been selected for another family.
Otherwise keep the social worker as your best friend
Best of luck to you. Sue

[HappyMomAnna]

yes, that is a fact there are 12 little faces and names I fell in love with.......and will never forget!

As for the polite push... things we did:

1) after hours we left short and sweet voice messages just saying "have you heard anything about this kid or that one, just wondering I know you would call if you had....but, I feel so helpless.
2) We sent Thank You notes ever now and then saying we were waiting and were glad these people did this job, it sure must be hard...
3) We asked a silly question here or ther real quick---like, In the photo listings should we be concerned if it says blah,blah"
4) We registered with Adoption Network for the national list of Waiting children and our caseworker had to send our homestudy out....because you can adopt from anyplace.
5) You caseworkers office may have a lending library and we made sure to show up at ours and "bump" into our worker on his way home...and smiled.
6) Anytime we took a class, or made a change like when we got a ladder for a fire emergency in our home, we called and asked him to update our file....showing we have done onemore thing.
7) email--we sent a hi note every few weeks and asked if there were any new listing of children...
8) When it felt real slow we called and asked if we could look at ALL the kids listed again....maybe we didn't see everyone, you know it is alot to look at the first time.... and reading all the bullitiens takes time...
9) We just made ourselves a plasant pain in the rear....and it also helped because our worker knew us even better by the time we were really into committee...
10) If your office has support groups go to them and tell your worker that you have...
11) tell your worker you found this awesome website...

you know how to be a pleasant irritation don't you?

[Allieloopy]

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

[angelical]

Thank you, everyone, for this interesting thread.

First of all, I'm glad to see that it takes other people a while to get through this too. Sometimes i feel like we are the only ones!

We first met our SW in May, and started working on our HS in June. It was done at the end of August, and we have been searching ever since.

We only have our homestudy in on one child so far. All of the others we have found, either our SW isn't hearing back from theirs, or they are on hold, or something... very discouraging!

I feel like I am on a time-clock. Our son is 18 months old, and I'd like to have our placement by next summer. I think that it would be best for him to be so young that he doesn't remember NOT having a sibling! On the other hand, I know that it will all happen when it is supposed to. God has a plan; I just have to wait and see.

The other thing that frustrates me is knowing that my child is out there, either with his/her birth family or foster family... not knowing that his forever family is searching for him. It saddens me to think that he/she goes to sleep each night without his parents to tuck him in. That is what makes waiting the hardest!

Luckily, though, we do have a good SW. She seems on the ball with everything. And I like the idea that someone said about sending her Thank You cards. She deserves it.

Take care everyone. Good luck!

Sharel

[kmalay]

I think there is some wonderful advice on here. I too applied in Feb of 2002, approved Sept 2002 and was matched once in Nov 2002 but that did not work out and then was matched in May of this year for 2 different situations and had to make a choice we chose the sib group over the single child, but with that being said we are still waiting for TPR on them so we have not met them yet. The waiting is terrible with the system and yes you have to stay on the caseworkers in a major way. You also have to do a lot of the searching and investigating yourself as we did. We learned a lot along the way because of it and I think it will make us better and more educated parents. Also just remember that the blessing at the end of the struggle is well worth it. A friend of mine told me while I was waiting to get matched compare it to the infertility treatments I went through. That portion was all the treatment prep stuff. Then when we were 1 of the finalists for a child that was the treatment itself and finally when we got matched with our boys she came up and congradulated me for being pg. I laugh now because it will be 9 months since I actually found them on the website next week. I joked and told her that the delivery better come soon. Just try to keep it in that perspective and it does help. Best wishes.