Adoption Journal #20

Well, some good news. Our licensing/home study process should be done within the month. Mandy had a chance to talk with our foster social worker (Angelica), yesterday and work out a few scheduling issues. May 9th our home will be reviewed and approved (hopefully) by Orange County Social Services. This is pretty exciting for us. Now there will still be a few more hurdles to jump through, but this is a big step for us. We were so excited that we went out and celebrated last night. Today we went down to IKEA and Target and got the last few necessities for our child's room in order to get through the licensing process. Then we spent the rest of the day putting together furniture, organizing our paperwork and making sure that all of the little (sometimes ridiculous) requirements of OC Foster Care/Social Services. This has truly been an answer to prayer.
This also goes to show that it pays to be persistent. Mandy and I know that social workers don't always feel pressure to follow-through on items or licensing requests. This is not to say anything about our personal social worker (who has been really great) but to say that persistence pays off. Mandy has called weekly just to say "hi" and to keep our names on the front of our Social Workers mind. Good thing we did. When Mandy made her weekly call our social worker informed her that all of our paperwork was complete and we were cleared to have our house reviewed and licensed. Our social worker told us that she was going to call us sometime next week. Now the fact that everything was cleared and she hadn't called us is pretty bad, but I wonder if she would have called us next week. Might we have waited two or three weeks? This could have been real bad since I am going to be in Washington DC for about six days at the end of the month.
So, the our social worker's non-chalant attitude about following-up on us could have cost us another month. Despite the excitement I feel that we are closing in on the finish, I am a little frustrated that a social service industry that constantly complains about needing "qualified" foster and adoptive parents doesn't feel the need to take immediate action to address the need.
I won't dwell on that, though, I am just excited to be moving forward. We appreciate all of you who have continued to pray for us through this process. Friends from diverse spots like Portland( Oregon), Riverside, Redlands, Granada Hills, West Covina, Orange County, Colorado Spring (Colorado), Bloomington (Indiana), Boston (Mass), Grand Rapids (Michigan) and more have all followed our journey and given us their support. To all of you we say thank you and ask you to keep praying as we are still a work in process.