Trying to get some details on 'process' w/ SWAN

My daughter came from PA. I am from MD and therefore it may be slightly different with it being out of state, but I'll tell you what happened in our case. We saw our daughter on the SWAN site. We called her worker and left a message. She returned our call after a pretty short time (a few days). We spoke with her and told her we were interested. We had our homestudy sent to her. We called her again to make sure she received it (mostly to put us in the front of her mind). She received over 100 homestudies. About a week later we called again and asked if we could fax a bio about us just to give her more information (again, mostly to put us in her mind). We then asked our worker to call about 2 weeks later. They talked and our daughter's worker said we were in the running. About 2 months later, we got the call that we were the selected family. We began visiting about 2 weeks later and continued to visit for 3 long months (they wanted her to finish kindergarten, although I don't know why because she wasn't learing anything, but thats another story for another day). She came home the week before father's day two years ago. So the entire process from seeing her on the web and her coming home took about 6 months. I do believe that is much longer than usual and in hindsight I would have pushed to have her moved sooner, but I didn't know any better at that time. Social Services does not move quickly, thats the one thing you can count on. Also - she was a legal risk placement and during the visiting her grandmother came forward and wanted custody. She failed the homestudy, but I think that held it up.

Thanks for the update! I got a call from one child's social worker today who said my social worker had not returned her call from last week - grrrrrr! I gave her all the contact info and am trying to wait patiently (trying) to call my social worker again, though I may just 'drop in' at her office. Diane

Hi Diane, Saw your post, and to respond! it's very frustrating, the waiting period, and so forth! It took me me almost 3 years for my placement! We started Winter 2002, and well we have our match, she is a doll, and moving in one month! I have alot of faith you will find a match! God bless you and Warmest Regards, Boston

Hi Diane, I agree with you that there seems to be so little information available and what I do get seems contradictory--for example, when we were calling our worker about kids from the photolisting, she told us NOT to call the child's worker ourselves, to let her handle it. We never got further than sending out our homestudy for any of the photolisting kids--either their workers didn't respond, or maybe my worker didn't follow up well--I KNOW she didn't do all that Lorraine did, and if I had known it was okay, I would have called, sent additional info, etc., too. Hearing that others have done all that calling themselves, if had it to do over again, I would send the workers my homestudy and a flyer and a box of candy--whatever it takes :) The way we got our little boy placed was that we had enquired about a 3 year old and his county worker felt like he had issues that wouldn't be a good fit with our family, but she remembered us when another child came into her county's care and called our worker....the time from that phone call to him arriving at our home was 2.5 weeks, but he is a legal risk placement... Good Luck and I hope you find some answers....