What Now?

I'm not sure how it is in NC, but in my state, if you are with a private agency, it can be very difficult to get placements of younger children. If you aren't already, I would become a county foster home for Dept of Child Services. Next... and with Christmas coming up, it'll be easy... make a photo Christmas card, maybe even a one-page Christmas letter with pictures of you and your husband printed on it and hand-deliver to the caseworkers at the local DCS office and surrounding counties. It helps to get your name and face out there. Often, caseworkers tend to call the foster homes they know well and fail to call new ones who aren't seasoned yet. It took awhile for us to break through and become known and trusted as a foster resource. Now, we stay full and caseworkers often bug us about taking on more than are licensed for. Good luck and keep persisting... you'll get called one of these days! :-)

I would suggest being very proactive no matter what. Our agency seemed to drag their feet so I started sending out our profiles. I had our CW with our agency get mad at me for this and tell me not to do it again since she was to make all contacts. However, yet another sibling group came across that she did not even mention to us that I found out about so I contacted the SW myself. Now those 2 babies are here with us and we are finalizing next month. Had we waited on our CW we could still be waiting to be placed. For me, I always though of it as DH and I were the only ones with a vested interest in us being placed at the end of the day so we had to make sure we were staying on top of things. To the CW this was just a job, to us our life.

It can take a really long time. I was first looking to adopt in 2009. I submitted my homestudy to MANY (out of state as well) different caseworkers. It was March 2009 and I submitted it for a local girl, and I got an email in June/July 2009 asking if I was still waiting to be matched. I found out I was selected, but did tons of paperwork and had to agree to an adoption subsidy before I even met her in October 2009. She ended up moving in December 2009, and her adopting was final in June 2010. She is now 10. It went smooth overall with her. I was looking to adopt again and had a very tough gal who didnt work out in my home, and kept looking. I was matched again but declined the placement. Then I got a call from my daughters original caseworker, asking if Id adopted again but two boys- ages 1 and 2. They moved in Dec 5, 2011, and am on the count down to 6 months (court). But it can be a very long and tiring road. As someone said earlier I only got these two babies since the other caseworker knew me and knew I was experienced with attachment disorder children. It can also be very anxiety producing. I would advise against looking out of state. I looked that route first and some states didnt accept my homestudy, etc and the ICPC process can even take LONGER.

Thank you so much for the feedback. I really think our sw has good intentions, but I feel like if I don't stay on top of her, we are out of site & out of mind. I continue to search on adoptuskids and in our state. We don't get a lot of feedback from the out of state inquiries. I never realized how taxing this process would be. I find myself very frustrated not only with our situation, but also for these children on the sites that don't have homes. I know that seems odd, but I wish I could do more or be more flexible in what my family can handle with children we adopt. I'm sure this is just a down point in frustration but it really makes my heart bleed for these kids. Anyway- thank you for reading my venting steam! We're going to keep looking & hope our sw sends more referals, we've only gotten one in 3months. Best of luck to all.

I could have written your post myself. It's definitely frustrating :grr: We made flyers and a website and sent out our flyers to all the social services in the state, and we constantly look at every website in the state that has waiting children. The only 2 children we've ever gotten to interview for, we found ourselves. One at a match event and one by sending our flyer and her worker reached out to ours. We don't have the luxury of sending our home study out of state, our agency doesn't give us a copy and will only submit in-state. As we've looked around, the workers we've met suggested either 1) keep attending every match event we can find and network, getting to know the social workers in other areas of the state or 2) foster in our own county first with legal risk to adopt It's been over 2 years for us and unfortunately, many of the workers have told us that's not abnormal :grr: yeah, with so many kids needing families, families wait so many years :cry: Rather heartbreaking. Good luck with your journey! Get your name out there!

do you have the same worker as me? That happened to us too, minus the match, however, Fridays interview was on a child that our worker hasn't done much on and we found and scheduled all the work ourselves. We told them we're more interested in results than a process. We'll give them a chance, but if we don't see them reach out, we're going to take it in our own hands, even at the risk of offending others. Kids needs advocates that are willing to step up and help them, even when it's not the popular decision. This is exactly a quality that is going to make you GREAT parents for your 'lil ones! :eyebrows:

Well we finally met with our cw to bring to her attention that some of what we were told insn't actually happening. We were told we would get at least one solid referal every couple of weeks, it's been 3mos and we've gotten 1. The one child was adopted by his foster parents and I think that is really awesome for the child. But after our meeting we got a perfect refferal for a 5yr old and 2yr old, exactly what we hoped for. So now I wonder, do I just have to stay on the cw's radar and be a squeaky wheel to get the grease? I feel like there should be a Crash Course in what to expect in this process beyond MAPP or PRIDE. Anyway, I am staying optimistic but this drive inside me & my husband to be parents is something we live with everyday. :eyebrows:

MelStall, I'm also in NC. We are just weeks away from having our adoption finalized. YAY! But it was a long time getting here. We started training in March 2008, licensed in Jan 2009. He moved in with us March 2011. And was our only placement during that time. We actually had quite a few referrals and submitted interest on a bunch of kids before our son was placed with us. We were never matched with any of the kids (either referred to us or we said we were interested in) until our son came along. It was a long, agonizing wait, but this boy is perfect for us and I'm completely in love with him. The right child will come at the right time. Stay positive.

We've been on the state boards without much luck. We are also not getting many referals from our cw.

Hello, I just wanted to wish you all the best! I hope it all works out, we are new to the foster system (8months out) with a 14 year old girl and the work is overwhelming right now for me so I am not having a good ride but I just wanted to wish you all the best!

Did you get a placement yet? What happened?

Hope it all worked out for you!

please update if you can!! I know the wait can be agonizing.... with our first adoption, we were licensed in October and didn't get any referrals for a few months. We were told about a few possibilities, but the kids either ended up going back with birthparents, or weren't in our age/level of care range. Then we got a referral in March for 2 girls , they did weekend visits with us as a pre-adoptive home, only for the judge to order the girls back to a family friend 2 months later.:grr: Then a few months after that, we finally got our referrals,for the 3 sibs we later adopted. :clap: Now we're back to waiting for a referral!! :o

one thing I wanted to mention with our first adoption worker, she told us that she would be submitting our homestudy for kids and not tell us unless we were picked as a match. At the time it didn't make sense to me, becasue I wanted to be aware of all the possibilities. But she said it was to avoid the constant disappointments,if we weren't chosen as the family. I don't know if this is the case with your worker, but just wanted to throw it out there.

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