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I have been posting mostly on the State Adoptions site since we are adopting thorugh the state, but I thought I might get more response here. How long from the time you turned in your paperwork until you got a home visit for your home study? I ask because we have been waiting since September to get our home visit scheduled. We thought we were going to get it done in December but had to reschedule twice, then the last time the sw forgot. Now I can't get a call back after being told to call on the 3rd right after the first of the year. I am at a loss as to what to do. I keep calling my area adoption specialist but I am not getting a response. Not even "sorry we lost your paper work." or "jump in the lake". :grr: I have now called on the 3rd (like I was told but it was after business hours, 3:30, my hours are till 5:00 but ok). Then I called yesterday the 4th in the morning and the afternoon, she wasn't in either time. So I sent her an email too. Today is the 5th and I have again called this morning (she was in a meeting), and just now 2:30 (she wasn't in again).:grr: Am I being too impatient? ___________________2/05 - 1st call to DHS for information3/05 - initial home visit5/05 - Start PRIDE Classes6/05 - Finish Pride Classes9/05 - Finished turning in paperwork10/05 - FA/CPR training11/05 - Called for follow up12/05 - Tried to schedule home visit 3 times
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You are not being impatient. THat does seem to be a very long time to wait for a state homestudy. I think you have called enough at this point though. I would wait until she gets back to you.
It seemed like our private homestudy was taking forever but I later found out that they do not do the home visits until your prints come back and prints were taking 8 weeks minimum (state prints, not even FBI clearance).
Also, I have been trying to get ahold of DCFS all week with little success as well. Everyone seems to be recuperating from the holiday and dealing with emergencies that they ignored during that time. Even my emergency took me three days to clear up.
Can you get a homestudy done privately to speed things up?
Jen
Since you're going through the state, there won't be a charge for the homestudy. However, a homestudy through the state takes much longer, sometime 3-6 months.
Hang in there, the wait is worth it...I promise!
In response to the previous post about a private homestudy...in TN, the answer is no. The state does not accept private homestudies.
ours was thru the state too and it took forever! From turning in the paper work to the homestudy was 2 months and then another 4 months until it was final. We wound up leaving state adoption several months later for many reasons and adopted domestically. If we adopt again, I won't get the homestudy thru our state, will contract on our own.
I'm going through the state also. I turned in my paperwork 9/05, had my home study done and license approved in 11/05. That didn't happen without a LOT of frustration, but it happened. I imagine it's different from state to state. In my state I've had several people tell me that if I can't get help from my licensor or cw that I should call their supervisor. (My licensor even told me to call her supervisor if I couldn't get help from her). It's probably a risk because you might make the licensor angry, but it sounds totally justified to call a supervisor at this point. Maybe ask if there is someone else you can work with. Dealing with the state isn't always fun, but remember the end result. Hang in there!
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I don't think you are being impatient at all, and I know how frustrating it is not to get any answers!!
What I found in our situation is that our SW communicates much better through email than phone--she won't return VMs, but emails within a day or two. I see that you've sent an email....maybe try that another time or two. Can you request a "read" receipt? Atleast via email there's a virtual paper trail, should you decide to contact a supervisor. Probably IM'ing is out of the question!?!
Good luck!
That's a long wait. Are you doing a straight adoption through the state? The process appears to go faster for foster only and foster to adopt families. It's really faster but we can take placements earlier than straight adoption families. We had our first home visit during the 10 weeks of training and then there was a mandatory visit within two weeks of finishing the classes. The caseworkers are not so quick about writing up the homestudies. We finished training in July 2004 and our homestudy was not completed until September 2004. Because we were foster to adopt we were able to take our first placement the same month we finished class. There was one couple in our class who was initially straight adoption but changed midway through class (we did the same) who got a legally free infant a month after finishing training. If they had stayed straight adoption they would have never been called for that baby. Our trainers were pretty good about letting us know how to work the system.
I'm in Ontario, so a different system, but here we were told it was a 2 year wait in our region just got take the classes before out homestudy. By fostering to adopt, we got bumped up.
I'll be honest...I think you might be a little impatient. I've been there are felt the same way. State and provincial agencies are typically underfunded, right? That means workers have a heavy caseload, so if a crisis hits or their under a time restriction for something else things get put to the side of the desk. In our case, our homestudy didn't get started because of our workers heavy case load for just over a month.
I always considered it good turnaround if my workers got back to me within 3 days of my giving them a call. Your worker has exceeded, but as a previous post said they are probably dealing with post holiday craziness.
Hang in there. We were really anxious to get going, too. Things really start moving after your first homestudy visit because in many cases there are mandatory timelines involved.
JMHO
Allana
WOW
We are going through the state. (NY)
We started our classes on Aug 2 we turned in our paperwork that they wanted us to fill out two weeks after that.
7 weeks after classes started we were matched with our Caseworker and she scheduled the start of our homestudy that next week. (the caseworkers came to the 7th class to meet us and set up the first meeting.
She came out to see us twice, got all of our paperwork returned and set, typed up our report and we were certified on Dec 9th.
I did hear that NY state caseworkers have 6 months from the start of a homestudy until the end. We have a great Caseworker who is on the ball but i have heard that everyone from our class is now certified.
Can you talk to someone higher up? I would also find out how fast it took others in your area.
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We're a Canadian couple who are currently living in the USA (Minnesota, actually.)
Our homestudy took about seven months, I think, to get done. In our case the slowdown was in getting the required paperwork from the various places we had lived in the past ten years in both the US and Canada. The differences in how the paperwork is done in Canada compared to the US made for a bit of confusion and slowdown in our case.
Think of adoption like a pregnancy. It will take at least nine months... if you're lucky!
In my own case our homestudy is now complete and we are in the "waiting for a match" phase. We're hoping to adopt a US child anywhere from a newborn up to age 12 (and possibly siblings -- the upper age range would be for the older sibling.)
They say that the adoption process is a good way to learn patience. There's a lot of waiting involved!
Hi,
You are not being impatient! We went the foster adopt route, and our adoption certification expired (they are good for 18 months)in November 2005. Our adopted 11 year old daughter from Colorado has been with us over 8 months and the adoption isn't finalized yet! And they were "in a hurry" to place her.
Keep calling