Icpc

It really depends if anything needs to be done first. For example, we had a case of a paternal grandmother wanting a foster child of ours but paternity had to be established first. That took a few weeks. Call and follow up! But don't freak out. It can be held up in their state or yours or some desk or courtroom in between.

Initial phone call from me in Oct. We got paperwork the following February. Dson placed with us the following Sept. In June, worker called and warned me there was a glitch, so I made a call and complained. That got paperwork faxed from here to there. One of the most horrible experiences of my life.

Our ICPC took less than three months, from notification to homecoming. We were warned it could take up to a year but we did a lot of "facilitating" -- from hiring an attorney in their state (who was confirmed as the baby's Guardian ad Litum and represented all three of us in court) to me tracking all the paperwork around both states. Also, we visited the baby twice a month (a 2,500 mile round-trip) so everyone knew how serious we were and no one had a chance to let the paperwork slide. Good Luck.

Ours took from start to finish 11 LONG months....Good luck!!! It is quite frustrating.

The home state requested our state to certify us around March 1st. We completed foster parent classes, 100% of our paperwork and had the home study on 5/3. We were finally approved on 7/30 after e-mailing the county director to complain because our caseworker sat on her hands forever. It took 2 weeks for the home state to respond and approve us (again after rattling chains on their end). We finally picked him up on 8/23. This took almost 6 months total. After we brought him back home, it took another 5 weeks until our state acknowledged he was in their care and 2 months until he had health insurance and access to resources in our state.

Ours took so long because the sending state NEVER GOT our license from the receiving state. I'd call your local ICPC office (normally it's in the capital) and ask them what is the holdup. When we did that they told us the info just was sitting on someone desk and they hadn't sent it off. Call them to see what is going on if the SW won't.

Thanks everyone! We are still waiting for the process to move forward. The social worker and her supervisor are sitting on it for an unknown reason. They haven't made any progress, and we are approaching the staffing shortly. I think they are trying to delay us so we are not eligible (we are already a licensed foster-adopt home!). We have tried to get higher ups involved but calls are not being returned.

Governor's office is all I can say! We had them push for us...and our local state representative also helped.

I agree...at the end when I was massively frustrated and repeated calls/emails to the social worker with our paperwork were ignored, I went nuts and googled "DFCS county director, state director, etc..." and e-mailed and called anyone in the county/state office I could possibly find and it finally got the gears moving again.

The caseworkers will say they are so overworked, which they probably are, but many are just burned out! During ours, I had a fairly good caseworker but sometimes had to call her supervisor because she got bogged down. She was also pregnant and had complications which eventually put her home on bedrest. Then we got an amazing caseworker who was on top of everything! But only had her a couple of months :( I also found out through internet searches as to how this all was supposed to work and what kind of time frame we were looking at. We began with me getting my grandsons in Nov. 2009, getting medical benefits and meager assistance for them in Jan. 2010, NEVER getting support from the parents, and finally adoption in May 2011 and that happened rather quickly because the parents signed away their rights and we didn't have to go to trial. Had they fought it our estimation was it would have taken another year. Anytime you deal with the state things will drag on unless you keep the fires burning! I continuously called and emailed everyone involved and if that didn't get results I went over their heads. You may think Congressmen can't do anything but all it really takes is a call from them and things get back on track!