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Big post...sorry.
We've applied to the City to do our licensing. We've already done our second week of classes and still haven't had a home visit. No calls, nothing. The only other couple in our classes that is also using the City (St. Louis) hasn't had anyone visit yet either (and they've been calling/e-mailing). They even said that they met an AA couple that have been registered as foster parents for a year in the city and they haven't heard from anyone. It's a bit scary, but because we need to stay within younger age ranges (we have a toddler at home) the word on the street is that our chances are better within the city if we stay with the public agency. We've heard great things about other private agencies in our city and technically, we've done so little with the state agency so far, we could move before it's "too late" if we wanted. Has anyone experienced anything similar? Any advice on public vs. private and the availability of the age range of 0-7 when using a private agency?
We adopted while licensed with STL City. Totally normal that you haven't had a home visit yet. At least half of the people taking classes with you will probably drop out. You will probably get a home visit when you are close to finishing or just finished. Are you wanting an adoptive placement or a foster placement? If you want an adoptive placement, you need to do a lot of your own searching. Not sure how many adoption workers there are with the city, but ours was great. We searched national photolistings and she send our homestudy in for tons of kids that we were interested in. Technically, I think you have to have an approved homestudy for 6 months before they will help you adopt out-of-state, but I think she was helping us do it before then. We ended up with a baby that I heard about through an acquaintance. The baby was with a private agency in the county, but our city adoption worker helped us with it, and it didn't matter that we weren't with the same agency as the baby. It was a legal-risk placement.
We didn't get very many leads on adoptable kids through the city, but they were very willing to help us try for the kids we found on our own.
Here are some good sites:
[url]http://www.kcchildren.org/jccd/profileSearch/search?type=basic&gender=-1&agerange=0-2&submit=See+Results[/url]
adoptuskids
[url=http://www.comeunity.com/adoption/waiting/photolists.html]Adoption Waiting Children Photolisting Directory[/url]
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