When to harrass worker (nicely of course)

We finished our classes before Christmas. Last visit was Christmas Eve, Eve. At that visit, we were told we could come sign the final paperwork and then would be licensed 4 days later. We told her we couldn't accept placements till January 10 so it was no hurry. MISTAKE. Our homestudy was finally ready to sign Sunday January 13. She said it would be signed by the supervisor and we would be active within the week. And then I don't hear anything. So this sunday, I email her and nicely ask if the supervisor has signed and we are active and include the right amount of small talk. I hear NOTHING. So the big question is, when do I email her back and ask what the status is. I am considering emailing her today and saying something like "You can't not respond to my emails! We are all waiting on pins and needles over here!" In all honestly, we are excited and a bit worried the homestudy won't be approved (we have a prior CPS investigation on our record as unfounded). But the basic truth is that I am seriously losing sleep worrying that there are babies lying in the hospital or in the shelter that need a family and we are basically waiting on a signature. So the big question, when do I follow up?

I'd call rather than email at this point. Some are horrible at responding to email and actually do better with phone calls. Yesterday was a holiday too.

Our worker is HORRIBLE about responding to emails. I often send an email and wait and wait and wait..But then I call and leave a VM and she calls back the same day. CRAZY, but I can only imagine the number of emails they get, and sometimes it is easy to let one slip through the cracks or procrastinate on replying due to other more urgent matters. I would just call and leave a nice message asking the status.

I am also waiting on one person, not at my agency, to look at one follow up piece of paper. Shouldn't take more than 30 seconds to look at this one piece of paper but here I wait. It takes all my self control not to call and ask the status everyday. I made the mistake of calling yesterday, which I forgot was a holiday. I'm sure I offended some people at my agency by forgetting that it was MLK day, but my personal day wasn't any different so I just forgot. So I already "spent" my follow up phone call this week, but I did call today on a completely unrelated subject. Afterwards I was thinking that maybe it will keep my name fresh in their minds, even though that was NOT why I called, it was a nice bonus. It is walking a fine line of following up and bothering them, I don't want to make them mad before I am even approved. Maybe find a way to call on an unrelate matter and throw that in at the end the follow up about the signature. Just a thought.

I probably should call. That would mean I have to find her number. Maybe I will make my husband call her tomorrow!

Agreed...I would definitely call at this point.

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Jen, Sunday may not have been the best day to email her, since Monday was a national holiday. She may have just been backed up with email when she returned to work on Tuesday? I feel for you...the social workers in my county are notorious for not returning emails or voice mail for weeks. It's so frustrating...

Some respond better to email, some better to phone. I find email response time is better at my agency. I would email again tomorrow and if you don't hear something back Friday, then call.

I ended up emailing again. That is her preferred method of communication. She said the supervisor still has not reviewed our homestudy. My worker does not work a normal monday through Firday schedule, so it is impossible to figure out when her holidays are. I have no idea when the supervisor works but I know it is not the exact same set of hours. I just feel a little annoyed that we have dropped everything to sign stuff and get stuff done for them and now we are just sitting here waiting for them to add one signature to the document. My lesson here is that I will not drop everything for them again. I should also point out that while it was a tad annoying to not hear back, I think Raven might be right about the holidays. In general, our licensing worker has been really on top of things and super professional. Way better than I was expecting. So the obsessive part of me is now trying to figure out where we are in the supervisors pile. The longer we go, do we get further down in the in box? I really hope I don't have to figure out how to nicely follow up to get the supervisor moving! And then I wonder if this whole thing is a test to see if I really can "work nicely with DFS"

I had to wait since the week of Thanksgiving and just received out copy of the homestudy yesterday. I was told it had gone out Jan. 11th to the state but both signatures were 1/14 and supervisor 1/16. Makes me fuming mad that we have been stalking the mail carrier every day thinking they lost something and here it was the county all along.

For those waiting on pins and needles. . . still waiting. All we are waiting for is the licensing worker's supervisor to sign off on the homestudy. She is in the same office as the worker. Same office where we signed it. We are at 2 weeks from when we signed it and our licensing worker signed it. Frustrating!!!

Well I am pretty excited that in 3 days it will have been a month that we have been waiting for our homestudy to be signed by the worker's supervisor. I am completely not impressed. I try to remind myself that maybe there are kids being abused who need her attention more than our homestudy needs the 10 minutes necessary for one more read and signature. (Unfortunately, I don't think that is true because I am pretty sure this supervisor only deals with licensing.) And, they are having the meeting to choose a family on a 9 year old that we would like to be considered for the first week of February. We can't even ask more questions about him without approval of our homestudy. Oh well. There must be a better family for him, since they don't even need to consider us. Blah. Feeling down about this whole process.

Hubby and I are in the same boat! We have been waiting for a month as well for the supervisors signature. What also sucks for us is that it's not over at that point. It still has to go to a private company our agency pays to review their paperwork and make sure everything is in order. Once they make any needed edits, it goes to the state and then we have to wait for them. Ahhhhhhh! I hate the wait. I will keep my fingers crossed for a quick reply for all of us.

My husband and I finished mapp first week of April, and waited 6 months for our home study to b finished. It was crazyyyyy! Our sw didn't always call us back, and when she did, she said she was "still working on it". Then, when we read the finished product, our names were wrong throughout most of it. We had to correct half of it before signing it. So, hang in there! It was a long wait, but has been worth it.