Self-induced DSS meeting

We passed the fire inspection easily, he just checked the smoke detectors and that was about it. He'd already measured windows and suchlike last year, and he treated it mostly as an update, but since we haven't any children placed yet there were some things that he didn't have to deal with (like checking records of fire drills and escape routes and such). I did have to redo our floor plan drawing just a little bit because in my haste I put the screen porch on in the wrong place, blocking a window that they could feasibly need to access in an emergency. So that's done.

All of the reference letters have been received. THANK YOU to all of our lovely friends who helped refer us! I don't know if those will be updated every year or not; obviously I hope for the fewest items to update, but if they do, I'm sure you'll hear from us.

The title of this post occurred this morning. When we were going through this process with Bethany, they explained to us that the autobiography interviews and the home visits were the ways in which our social worker gets to know us better as individuals, and we build that trust relationship. I know that I became much more comfortable working with them because of these steps. In the current system, however, we did not have to redo our autobiographies from the Bethany homestudy, and SC employs Certified Investigators (CI) - social workers whose only job is to travel around and do home visits and create the text of the homestudy from them. This person is not our personal social worker. So, I wondered, when do we get to know our own worker? I wrote and asked her how the process allowed for that opportunity, and she said, "How's Thursday morning at 10:00?"

So this morning we went to meet with her for the sole purpose of chatting about anything and becoming more comfortable with each other. I was really worried because when it came down to it, I didn't have any specific questions and didn't know what I'd say. I was also worried that by straying from "the way it officially works" we'd be labeled some of "THOSE" people, or that it would have negative repercussions somehow.

It ended up being a very nice hour. We mostly went over the process again, trying to identify those things which vary from the private agency approach, clarifying the differences between the adoption regional office and the foster county office and who does what, we shared photos of our niece and goddaughters, and chatted a little bit off topic about work, school, pets and life in general. It was a very good conversation, and accomplished what I had hoped: that we're now hopefully more comfortable working together.

Next Wednesday our CI comes to do the first of two home visits. Our lovely friend Katharine is coming tomorrow to help me do some deep cleaning that hasn't been done in a while, and hopefully everything will still be in order by Wednesday. After that visit we'll have a break for turkey day and then have the second visit (I assume that it won't be quick enough to finish before we travel, but you never know), and she'll wrap up the homestudy. Then it all goes over to the county foster office and we'll be licensed. Because we're hoping for very young children, there could be a bit of a wait... or we could have a temporary placement by Christmas. More uncertainty, but at least things are moving.

Thanks for your continued prayers!