Redacted Files

I hope that your wait is WAY shorter than ours. It took us SEVEN months from the time our case was turned over to adoption. I would hope that they would put a match where the child is not yet in their forever home at the head of the line. I was told the state has changed things and now instead of each county being responsible for their own files everything goes through Austin, and they don't have enough workers to deal with the caseload.

That length is what I was afraid of. We are adopting a teen, and 7-8 months is a ridiculous time frame when he is just getting closer to being 18.

His attorney can request to the judge that an order be put in place to get the redacted files by a certain date. Our attorney did it for us and we got it in 2 weeks.

In Harris county it is taking over 6months plus. I have heard if you get the redacted file court ordered it will go faster but I do not have a time table on that.

That's ridiculous. Our case was in Denton County (Region 3) and our CW had the redacted files at the TPR prove-up to give directly to our agency case manager. I hear these stories and it makes me sick that the system is so screwed up sometimes...and the only ones who truly suffer are the kids.

Dos that mean you hired your own attorney? I would love to hear details regarding this, his case worker does not seem to feel a sense of urgency in the matter.

I should have added that our files were court ordered at the six month plus mark. The Judge herself thought it was ridiculous that it was taking so long and court ordered them, it took THREE DAYS from that point... The Judge only realized it was taking so long when the CPS AW went back to court for a follow up at the six month mark. I would think that the GAL could try and get a court order. Do you even know who, or can you find out, who the GAL is for the child? Our's could have asked for the court order soon if he had been on top of things, but having so many cases to keep track of he didn't even realize we were taking so long (or so he said). I didn't know this was possible or I would have asked for the court order months earlier. It least it would be worth a shot. Our attorney (the adoption lawyer I hired) tried to get the case finalized without reading the files, but was told that it impossible. They previously were allowing for that, but then when the files were finally read families changing their minds and the adoptions were already finalized...very hard to imagine, I can't believe it happened more than once or twice, if at all. That is just what I was told.

Ours took about 7 months unfortunately. And the health history reports are taking about 8-9 months. It is such a slow process. : (

We got our's in about a week or maybe two weeks as far as I remember. It was very fast. The kids' caseworker was always very good at keeping the ball rolling. I was told that is not always the case and we were lucky with getting a good caseworker.

I'm still waiting to hear back from his caseworker to see about getting a court order for the records. I'm not expecting much. Our agency does not want us to meet the young man until we have read all of his files, and know his history. I'm guessing they do not 100% trust the child's caseworker to give us a complete background. My husband and I are pushing to meet with his therapists in the RTC, his teachers, and doctor. We hope to piece together his past from them, so we may move forward to meeting him w/o the files. I don't mind waiting the 8 months for the files in order to complete an adoption, but not being able to move forward in meeting him and transitioning him into a home is ridiculous.

Ours took 10 months. Luckily, they let us finalize the adoption in June after signing that we had not received the files. It seemed funny when they gave me the files at last in January, months after adoption! I'm still happy to have them.