Are You Gonna Be My Girl?

In the last post, I explained how my husband and I met these adorable kids at a CPS event and requested information about them.  Our original caseworker, let’s call her, Marissa, left the agency, unbeknownst to us.  A few weeks passed and we were given a new caseworker that we will call June.  June called us on the phone and chatted with us.  She told us about a few sibling groups that were available for adoption.  All of them met the criteria that we were looking for, but we decided to hold off on submitting our home study for them until we heard about what happened with the kids that we met at the event, Z & H. 

June had not been made aware of our interest in these kids, even though we were told that she had been.  Truth be told, we just wanted to know a little more about their story and any other information that they could provide us.  Another week or so passed, and I received an email that June had submitted our home study for Z and H.  WHAT?!  Submitted our home study?!  That’s not what we asked for… we just wanted some information on the kids.  We called her as soon as we got the email to ask why we skipped the initial step.  June went on to explain that all the home studies were due the next day and we had to submit ours to even be considered. 

The way that this whole process works is basically as follows.  Step one: Hear about/inquire about certain children available for adoption.  Your caseworker usually tells about kids that are available for adoption and meet your specifications.  He or she gives you, the prospective parents, whatever information they are privy to in order to assist in decision-making.  Step two: You submit your home study.  This is all of your paperwork as well as the outside agency’s home study assessment (which I will discuss in a later post).  Step three: The home studies are reviewed by a board (from CPS, I would guess) of individuals who narrow it down to the top three families that seem like they would be a good fit.  Step four: The caseworkers for those three families meet together with this board to decide on a top choice for the kid(s).  Step five: The top family is notified that they have been chosen and then decide if they want to proceed with the adoption process.  The other two families are not made aware that they made the top three.

This is not the end of the journey, nor does this make anything official.  From that decision, there are still several steps to ensure that the family has a better idea what they are getting into before they even meet the kids.  This process is aimed to protect the privacy of the children (by not making their records available to more people than those that would need to see them) as well as their emotions (by not having the family meet them yet).

At this point in our journey, we just knew that our home study was submitted and we were waiting.  Our home study was submitted at the beginning of March and most of March passed without any news.  We trusted God that if this was what He desired we would get chosen.