Need advice

Depends on your worker I think. My first contact with DHR was over trying to get approved to take recently orphaned hospitalized children that ended up having a relative come forward unexpectedly. When that happened, and there was no need to rush, everything stopped, paperwork got misplaced, phone calls not returned, etc. Months later, there was another situation with a child from another county that needed fast placement. I was doubtful as I could not get through to my worker at all, she never returned calls, I had not been able to get listed for the classes, nothing was going right. I was able to speak with the supervisor directly, and everything was done lightening speed and I brought him home very quickly. This time I ended up with a different SW, then another briefly, then another who I've had for three years now. All phone calls get returned quickly, emails answered sometimes immediately, I would say she has done an Excellent job. My SW from the other county has as well. I would not yet complain to the state. I WOULD send an email to your worker and let them know you didn't receive the notification yet, and you thought it would have arrived by now.

Thank you for the suggestion. I wanted to avoid contacting the state office if possible since I know the SWs have a lot of clients to oversee. She's been pretty good the last few months at returning my calls so maybe I'll just call her and pray for a little more patience :)

I think you should call, at least every 2 weeks, perhaps once a week. Just going on my own area, the squeaky wheel gets the completed home study. A number of us compared notes at support group meetings, and that's what worked for many of us. I think this is an outrageous amount of time for you to wait. Yeah, yeah, the dog ate your homestudy, wait, no that was "lost in the mail" right? In my area 7-8 months is common, and we all thought that was nuts... but it's a huge county, and I know it's shorter in smaller counties in my state. I would *definitely* call the supervisor next. (going up the chain of command) I would just be naive, and say something like "I'm wondering how long it usually takes to have home studies done?" I'd also start looking into agencies to license up with. If your local DCF department is this "competent", it might be nice to have a competent agency *between* you and the State agency. Just a thought.

Also took forever for EVERYTHING. In fact, we finished our GPS classes a few days before our son was born. (he was a private adoption, not thru DHR) He attended (at 2 weeks) our CPR class. They didn't do our 2nd home study until our son was 4 mo old! He came home in October and they finalized us in May! Paperwork was lost, they moved up from one county to another, etc! Crazy! We have very little respect for the DHR in our county and I pray it is better elsewhere! Hang in there and keep hounding your SWer! Good luck!

Our Horrifying Story With DHRWe went to DHR wanting to adopt 1 child, a girl. We were asked to take a sibling group of 5; three girls and two boys. Their ages ranged from 10 months old to 8 years old and we had / have our biological 9 year old at home. We agreed and within a month’s time we began visitation with three of the children (ages 8, 6, 10 months). These were beautiful kids with gorgeous smiles. We fell in love with them. Months later we met the 4 year old and the 3 year old; they too were gorgeous. All these kids were abused by former foster parents or their biological parent. They had huge emotional scares and physical scares. After they all moved in, there was never a dull moment and our house was full of laughter, and sometimes tears. From night terrors to screaming fits for no reason. But we as a family all worked well together and we work on their challenges together and we all became stronger. One of our kids began to display violent tendencies and we BEGGED DHR for assistance. After receiving what they considered assistance we were informed DHR knew of the child’s issues and were told that the child needed his/her own placement in a therapeutic home. We informed DHR we wanted to keep our child but asked for training on how to handle his/her violent actions and we also informed them we found out they already knew about the issues and asked why they did not inform us. Days later all 5 (our foster children) were removed from our home; weeks away from beginning adopted. They were with us for 250 days and we would do it all over again. We are all heartbroken and we have been told they will never come back. We have also been told the children don’t want to come back and our children have been told we don’t want them back.We went to DHR to adopt one child and 1 year later we have none.We want our children back; but we need new laws in our foster care / adoption system.In our case DHR violated half of the foster parents bill of rights and admitted it. All we got is a sorry, we are so sorry......

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How awful for you arthms2! Have you tried contacting the head of DHR in Montgomery or even going as far as contacting the state governor's office? We still have not heard from the county we are trying to adopt from. Our SW is waiting on them to forward her info on the child we are requesting to see if we can 'be a good fit'. I agree that we need new laws, these poor children deserve permanency

I am trying to adopt through DHR in Alabama....here is my blog on the process so far [url=http://hestersadoptionjourney.blogspot.com/]Our Adoption Journey[/url]

We too are looking to adopt through DHR. And, yes, it seems like it is taking FOREVER for all the classes, paperwork, home study, state approval, CPR/1st Aid...

We have finally been matched with a child. He is with us for the 90 day period prior to filing for adoption. Our sw told us to continue making inquiries until we were matched to keep our names in front of the other sw. I felt like we were shopping for a child. Our child we were matched with is the first one we inquired about almost 3 years ago. It does take a long time for everything to be approved. The best advice I can give is to keep in touch with your sw. They have huge caseloads and had I not gotten back with ours it would have been longer before we discovered that the paperwork hadn't made it to where it needed to be for approval. Here's hoping the rest of our 'journey' goes smoothly. Good luck!!

Our home study also took forever to get completed. Started classes October 2013 and finished December 2013. Had last home study January 2014 and all paperwork was submitted to our SW that day. April rolls around and we haven't heard anything so decided to stop by the local office and check on things; where we were told they'd changed one of the forms and we needed to refill a new one out. SW said she sent in our files to the State Office mid-April. As of mid-June 2014 we had not heard anything and had her check with the State Office. Of course, we got the "lost in mail" excuse. After some pestering we finally got approved August 2014. We made an three inquiries since then and have heard back in reference to only one. DHR is really slow in Alabama; which I want to chalk up to underfunded and understaffed, but sometimes I don't know.