Does it ever get better?

When we had our first meeting in early June with the social worker from the Child Welfare Agency, we got Live Scan fingerprinting for the FBI and Child Abuse Registry clearance. However, when our first home-study visit was interrupted, the social worker requested the Fingerprint clerk to cancel the fingerprinting request since we were going to be working with a different county and our local Child Welfare Agency no longer had a right to know. In August, when we got bounced back to our local Child Welfare Agency, the social worker advised us that the clerk never removed the FBI and Child Abuse Registry clearance requests, and the social worker had received our clearance reports. She advised she would request copies and we did not need to be fingerprinted again. Well, today, she called me and even she had to laugh when informing me that the Fingerprint Clerk forgot to sign off on the FBI clearance. So, we will have to make another appointment to get finger-printed again!!! They do the live scan fingerprinting at the Child Welfare Agency and we could have avoided the inconvenience by getting fingerprinted the last time we met our social worker (August 14, 2008). Sweet!!!

The upside to our experience so far with the foster care agency is that God is giving me patience and grace—I did not even get annoyed after she told me we would have to come in and get re-fingerprinted. One of my biggest pet peeves is government ineptitude. I firmly believe that as public servants who are paid with tax dollars, we have a moral obligation to serve our customers with professionalism, efficiency and a true heart for public service. I am still amazed that both the social worker and I were heartily laughing after the call!