Another year ended

Apparently the last time I updated was October.  I keep waiting for something to happen that I can report on, and then nothing does.  This weekend something happened: our homestudy had it's first birthday. I've been saying that it "expired", because we technically don't have an approved homestudy available between the last day and the renewal.  Normally renewal happens prior to expiration date (which was May 2 for us), but due to one thing and another, it hasn't been completed.  Hopefully our end of it will be done by the end of next week - the proper paperwork is in the mail - and then we have to redo the fire inspection.  Last time it took him a month to get here, so we'll see how this works.

In the meantime, there has been a bit of a change in the general situation.  The last time I posted, we had about 24 inquiries outstanding. This means that we'd submitted our homestudy for these children and had not yet heard any result from their individual social workers.  Then, suddenly (for us), the Federal and State budgets changed in the area of Children and Family Services, cutting social worker hours, laying off a lot of folks, and making it much more difficult for states to pay private agencies or deal with the ICPC (Interstate Compact). 

The result for us is that the last time I posted here was approximately the last time we heard anything from anyone out of state, except for one child in February (whose worker chose a family closer to home) and another child I inquired on a couple of weeks ago, whose worker emailed me that the children on that website are no longer available for out-of-state placements.  None of the other 24 inquiries followed up... in fact, no one even returned our social worker's multiple phone calls to verify they received our study.  Inter-state adoptions, while still possible for extremely hard-to-place children, seems to have become nearly impossible, and the program we're in is completely dependent on inter-state inquiries due to other restrictions on Agency/DSS in-state interactions.

The arrival of our homestudy renewal puts us in an ideal position to make a change in our program.  However, we've been experiencing a lot of different emotions and thoughts, we're doing a LOT of praying, and every time we discuss we come out with something different.  Oddly, we've thus far been in agreement each time, but none of it is leading us to a solid conclusion.

We're proceeding with the renewal of the homestudy as it is, but we've also received paperwork for the domestic infant program, as well as having contact information for a local DSS person if we choose to switch to foster adopt.  (As an aside, we had hoped to do local foster care while seeking a child out-of-state, but we've been chasing that option down for a definitive NO from DSS.  They don't like the idea of working from more than one angle.)  We've also seriously discussed the possibility of changing to a local agency so that we can be more actively engaged in the situation. 

Please join us as we pray for clarity on which direction we need to go. Please also pray for our social worker, Bert, who just received some discouraging news about her health and is feeling the pressure of the work time that will be lost in dealing with it. 

Thanks.