state licensing

Today we had our first meeting with the social worker who will be working to license us as foster parents through the state of California. In order to adopt through California's foster care system, one needs to be concurrently licensed as a fost/adopt parent. It was a painless meeting, though it seemed to focus more on foster parenting! We had to keep reminding the social worker we were there to start the process to adopt! Anyway, we got a bunch of paperwork and once we complete and return it, then she will do a homevisit. The last time she did licensing through the State was three years ago, so she had to dust off her manuals!

Sandals for Baby!!!

As I had stated in an earlier post, we have to totally rely on faith if it is God's plan that we are to complete our family by adopting internationally. I am trying to brainstorm how to raise $25,000 and one of the ideas is to sell sandals from Africa. I went to a bar-b-que today and I told my niece about my adoption plans and selling sandals to raise funds, and she promised to buy 2 pairs! Praise God! I know that is $40 down and $24,960 to go, but I am on cloud nine. With so many valleys in adoption, you quickly learn to stop and thank God any time you are on a hill--big and small! The sandals are not even here--I have ordered 25 pairs from Africa and hope they are mailed soon, but already I have made a sale! As soon as they arrive, I will post some pictures--as soon as I figure how to do that on a post. I am not techy at all, I got my first digital camera last december and I am still trying to figure it out! So, any techies out there, please give me tips on how to add pictures on a blog :)

A few steps backwards or new steps forward?

We finally received a call from the other County Child Welfare Agency and were scheduled to have our first Home-Study meeting with our Social worker this evening at 6:00 p.m. He just called at 1:30 p.m. to advise that he needed to re-schedule!!! No apologies, just letting us know that his schedule is tight for the next two weeks and we would need to re-schedule!!! Argh!!! I am of course quite miffed—my husband had taken the day off today to make sure the house was spick and span and I was also leaving work early to make sure I had dinner ready since the meeting was likely to be about 2-3 hours!!! As you can imagine, I am beginning to second guess my decision to first go through the foster system in our adoption journey. So for those of you who are still curious why anyone would consider International Adoption instead of adopting through the foster system, this is one of the reasons!!!! I am really praying that God would give us clarity in the direction to go—is there a child in the foster system that God has planned for us to parent or is this a sign to go forward with international adopion? Please pray that we would not be easily be discouraged and choose the path of least resistance, but instead be committed to being in God’s will as we travel on this adoption journey. Someone has aptly said that adoption is not for the faint hearted!

movement on our domestic adoption

We received a call today from the State Community Licensing Unit. If we are to adopt from foster care (still struggling with the direction to go--domestic or international), we will need to be licensed as foster parents by the State and then the County where we were referred to will do the homestudy and placement of the child. I had been calling the supervisor in the home finding unit in my county (they do the homestudy and licensing as foster/adoptive parents) for a month trying to follow up on when the state would contact us to start their licensing process. I had not been getting any answers to this is a huge step forward! During the call we scheduled an appointment for next week to begin the state licensing. It was not very inspiring when the Social Worker told me she had not done licensing in a situation such as mine in 3 years and she has to read up on the process. My situation is a little unique-- I work in my county of residence and have access to information on the birth parent/s addresses. The Child Welfare Unit felt that this would pose a conflict of interest--not sure how, since I would be required to take any child I was fostering in the hopes of adopting to any court ordered visitation with the biological parent/s. Anyway since I had to be referred to adopt from another county, I additionally have to be licensed by the state. I know this is all so very confusing. In California, you can only become licensed to adopt in your county of residence. If you need to be referred to a different county, you have to be licensed by the state as a foster parent and not by the county you are adopting from. The county just does the homestudy and placement (matching you with a child and placing the child in your home and the subsequent home visits and adoption process). So, we will see how this process goes. We still have not started with the homestudy with the county which takes a couple months, so..........

Why International Adoption?

When I tell friends that we are hoping to adopt a child and are looking researching International Adoption, most ask why we won't adopt from fostercare. This lenthy blog helps to explain the state of adopting from foster care in California and why are exploring other options! So, put up your feet and ..............

I will attempt to provide some information on some of the laws that impactthe foster care system as well as my own personal experiences in trying toadopt from the foster care system. Public law 96-272, was passed by Congress in 1980. This act was passed to correct or alleviate problems in the foster care system and to promote permanency rather than multiple foster placements. Another goal of the act was to encourage social workers to work toward reunification of the family and to avoid long-term foster care for the children if possible. Many child welfare agencies developed polices that emphasized family reunification as this was politically popular. The primary goal for children placed in foster care was to provide support services such as parenting classes for the parent/s with the goal of returning the children back to the parent/s. Most people will agree that it is best for a child tobe raised by their biological mom and dad where possible. However, it seems to be a no-brainer that a parent who abuses his or her child to the extent that the child is removed from the home (most child welfare agencies require heinous abuse to occur, before they will remove a child from an abusive home) will not suddenly become a better human being because they take some parenting classes. It is instinctive to protect and nurture your child and if a person does not have this instinct, no amount of classeswill make this person a better parent. No one needs classes to figure out that putting out cigarettes on a child's skin, starving them, locking them up in a bathroom or sexually molesting them is wrong and heinous! The article below demonstrates why this policy was failing:

http://www.city-journal.org/html/7_3_fatal.html

After public outcry over the number of children who were getting killed after being reunified with their parents from foster care, Congress enacted the Adoption and Safe families Act of 1997 (public law 105-89) which sought to address 3 main concerns:
1. Child welfare system that was biased toward family preservation at the expense of children's safety and well-being,
2. Inadequate attention and resources were devoted to adoption as a permanent placement option for abused and neglected children, and
3. Children continued to remain in foster care too long.

In my state (California), it appears that the child welfare agencies have never moved from the 1980 law that emphasized family preservation over child safety.This is not just anecdotal information, I work on the opposite end of theChild Welfare system. When children are placed in foster care, my office receives referrals from the Child Welfare Agency to seek reimbursement of monies spent on foster care placement from the parents. I cannot tell you how many times we open, close and re-open cases--we first open a case when a child is removed from the home and placed in foster care, close the case after the child has been reunified with the parent, re-open thecase once the child has been abused again, and on and on again. The court orders detailing the abuse read like horror stories and it is unimaginable that the children could be reunified with their abusers again!

Most people are under the misconception that it is easy to adopt from the foster care system and that people are just not willing to adopt from the foster care system. I was under the same misconception--I believed that the children were being returned to their abusive parent/s because of a shortage of prospective adoptive parents. That was before I started on my own adoption journey and got a quick education! During our orientation meeting which is the first step in adopting from the foster care system, the social worker asked people who were there to start on the adoption process to raise up their hands. About half the room raised their hands--the other half were there to become licensed as foster parents. The social worker proceeded to make a pitch to the prospective adoptive parents to reconsider adoption and instead begin the foster parent licensing process because the county had a shortage of foster parents! It has been 3 months since we started trying to adopt through the fostercare system, and the Child Welfare Agency has not yet even started on our homestudy!

Confirmation of God's plan? Domestic or International Adoption?

A month later, we still have not heard back from the County agency we were referred to. The supervisor in our local County agency had promised a month ago to send us a copy of the referral letter she sent to the other agency. However, we have not received a copy of the letter--though I have spoken to her twice since her promise to send us the copy! At this point, I am not even sure if she sent our referral to the other agency. I have been praying for clarity about pursuing a domestic or international adoption, and I wonder if this is my answer.

I have been stalking different blogs by people who have or are in the process of adopting from Ethiopia and educating myself on the process and culture! I am very excited and hope to meet a family that adopted from Ethiopia when we go out of state to my husband's family reunion at the end of this month.

Please pray for all the millions of orphans around the world who will go to bed tonight hungry, not sure of tomorrow and with no one to call mom or dad.

Classes anyone?

We were scheduled to begin the state mandated pre-adoptive classes today, but we still have not yet received the go ahead to take the classes in my county. I have called the supervisor in my local child welfare agency and left messages for three weeks, but she still has not called me back! I needed her to contact the other agency she transferred our application to for verify if it was okay to take the classes or at least give us a contact person in the other county, but she has not responded to my calls. We don’t want to spend the next three Saturdays taking classes only for the other county to tell us that we have to re-take the classes in their county! The classes are all day (9-4 p.m.), so that is quite a lot of investment in time, if they don’t’ accept the classes. I am a bit envious of private adoptions since they have a much shorter training requirement. I wish I could do the class online! The next classes in our county are for September and we hope we will have been given the okay to take them here since it is 3 hour round-trip for three Saturdays to take them in the other county.

During our first home-study meeting, the social worker we had been assigned to advised us it was best to take the classes in the other county so we could meet and develop relationships with the social workers there. She said the social worker doing the "PRIDE" training would be the same social workers placing the children, and depending on our relationship with the social workers, this would determine how fast a child was placed in our home and the “quality” of the referral. What!!! So, the placement is based on favoritism and not the best interests of the child??? It was nice that she gave us this insight, but it left a bad taste in our mouths. I thought I was turned off by private domestic adoptions because you had to “sell yourself” so that the birth parent could "choose" you. Now we have to “sell ourselves” to the social workers doing the placements? How do they determine the “quality” of a referral? The looks? The age? The child not having been alcohol and/or drug exposed in utero? The gender? The race? What??? I pray I misunderstood her.

Fost/Adopt here we come.....or not!

We were scheduled to start our home-study today with our local Child Welfare Agency and midway through the introduction, the social worker realized that I worked for the County and had access to a database system which has addresses of the parents of children placed in foster care. Incidentally, I had provided this information with our application two months ago, but I guess no one caught this. Anyway, she went to confer with her supervisor who felt that this posed a conflict of interest—I am not sure why since in California, you are licensed as a concurrent foster/adoptive parent. This means that a child first comes into your home as a foster child, while the foster care system is trying to reunify the child with their parent/s, relatives or as a last resort, making a permanency plan that involves adoption. In the interim, the foster/adoptive parent must take the child to the parent/s for any court ordered visitation until parental rights are terminated by the courts and the adoption is finalized. I pointed out that they would already provide me with the parent’s addresses for court ordered visitation, but the decision was made to refer us to a different Child Welfare Agency in a different county.

Could our local child support agency have saved us from having to take the afternoon off for this meeting? Yes, they could have read our application and made the determination two months ago, but oh well. The social worker did not even apologize for the oversight; she was just thrilled for me that I would have the afternoon off to enjoy lunch with my husband. Yes, I do enjoy having lunch with hubby, but I am trying to save up all my time off to bond with the munchkin when we finally get a referral. So all the mountains of paperwork we had completed is now in the shredder!

We have a social worker!

The first step in adopting from the California foster care System is to go for an orientation. We had our orientation meeting beginning of April. The next step is to complete a host of paperwork, submit it and if accepted, get assigned a social worker to do your homestudy. After a seven week wait, we were assigned a social worker and we are scheduled to have our first meeting next week. Yippee! Progress!

Starting on our Adoption Journey

My husband and I are just starting on our adoption journey. This is something that we have both felt led by God to do--before we even met, God had placed in each of our hearts the desire to build a family through adoption. We have been in prayer over this for a while. We believe that while growing up, God was preparing both of us for this journey. My husband comes from a large family--5 kids, but his dad has a huge heart for children. After his 5 children became adults, he fostered children from the foster care system demonstrating selfless love in nurturing and taking care of children who were not biologically his own, but whom he could not have loved any more if they had been biologically his. My own parents always took in pregnant unwed girls who had been kicked out by their parents and always gave the girls a job, love and a home for the children. I think we lost count of the number of children who my parents have unofficially fostered! My parents have always demonstrated Christ's love in action and I can attribute a large part of my love and great compassion for orphans to them.

We have a biological son who is four years old, and to answer the questions we often get when we tell people of our plans to adopt: yes we can conceive and carry a child, and no, we are not adopting because I do not like being pregnant! Actually I loved being pregnant. We are adopting because we want be obedient to the call the Lord has placed in our hearts.

We are looking at both International Adoption and Adoption from the Foster Care system. For international adoption, we are looking at Africa and specifically Ethiopia--I guess the country chose us! All the other African countries that had allowed international adoptions seem to have closed that door. At first we had planned on adopting from Kenya, but after researching adoptions in Kenya, we learned that Kenya requires an initial 3 month stay to foster the child before the adoption process can begin. The whole process requires a 9-12 months in country stay and there is no guarantee that you will end up adopting a child even after that length of time in Kenya!! I am sure everyone who knows me, knows why our first choice was Kenya! We then looked at Sierra Leone, Ghana, Liberia, Uganda and Zambia, but all these countries either have closed the doors to international adoptions or their programs are too new (Uganda) that there is too much risk of the adoption process not going through.

Please join us on our exciting journey--a journey with many unknowns and pitfalls. This blog will chronicle our adoption adventure--we will share our joys and trials and we hope through it that the body of Christ will heed God's call to take care of the orphans and widows. We pray that as we go through this journey, God's manifest greatness will be evident and that He will receive all the honor, praise and adoration.

for it is not the hearers of the Law who are just before God, but the doers of the Law will be justified (Romans 2:13, NASB).