What are the odds? Please help!!

Im not in your state but here they try to place with a family member if at all possible. With your involvement through phone calls from the beginning, the visits you have had and the agency recommendation of placement with you I would say you have a good chance of getting placement.

We had the same issue with daughters previous FP's. They appealed placement with us and added a letter from a therapist (whom never met us or spoke to us). Eventually CPS had to uphold their decision for placement. The FP's had her for 7 months with them when that happened but we were involved a month into the placement. It took along time for our ICPC to go thru and approve because of paperwork issues (our state never sent the other state our FC license). My best advice is keep doing what you are doing. Reach out to the GAL or CASA. Once we met the CASA on our daughters case and actually sat down with her she was fighting for us. She had never met us so she was partial to the FP's because she "knew" them and knew hubbys family were all messed up (but hubby was not). The distance was an issue with us because we couldn't travel across country for visits and only were able to twice. Another option...call the governor of the sending state. Ask for their help. Get whomever you can on your side to push it along. The longer the child stays there the worse it will be. Also, keep ALL phone records...make a journal as you go. We had everything documented that we did. It was dated, who we spoke to, what they said, etc...when the FP's took us to court our attorney used that proof that we were involved a month into the case. It seemed we were never included as a "resource" on the case so nobody knew but us and CPS. Once we went to court it was documented. When we did end up in court luckily we had a good judge whom said he was not going to sit on a custody battle...and left it up to CPS to make the placement decision. Pretty much closed out anyway for the FP's to fight us in court. Luckily CPS and CASA saw that it was best to place with us. I can still remember the FP's smirk when the Judge told them that he wasn't going to sit on a custody battle (like they somehow WON) and when they walked out of the courtroom blatantly asking the SW (in front of us and CASA) "Where is my $$$ for traveling to this hearing!" OMG it was really bad! All I can say is call anyone you can. We called the Governors office, our local state representatives office, CASA, CPS (Constantly) and notated everything! We took our cell phone records to our attorney. They claimed we were not involved til later on when we had documentation of the calls we made. In fact when the SW went to prison to ask hubby's sister for resources she told her about my husband. The SW wrote it down (our last name is a hard one to spell) and she asked the SW how did she know how to spell it? That's when the SW told her we were already involved! LOL Let me know if you need any help and how it goes. It sucks :(

Thanks for the support... I spoke with the caseworker yesterday again and she reassured me too. She is contacting Lansing all the time to make sure this case is top priority for them, and she is letting them know how wonderful the visits are going. Hopefully this is all over soon! I will be contacting as many people as I can.... She said little man's lawyer will be calling to talk to me to get to know us, but I haven't heard from her yet. So, I will be starting there. Thanks a ton! And, yes the process stinks!!