After we finished our classes, there will still several
small things to check off of our list.
We completed those around the end of January and received our
license. Our caseworker said that we
should go to an event called the Heart Gallery. This event was to take place
the first weekend in February and I was scheduled to work, but thankfully a
friend took the shift for me. I just had
a feeling that we needed to be there.
Every year at Heart Gallery, many prospective adoptive
parents are invited to come and hang out with children ages 5 and up that are
legally free for adoption. The idea is
that you mingle with these kids and see if there are any “sparks”, which help
to create an interest in adoption. There are tables where you can find out more
information about the kids and speak to some caseworkers about the
process. CPS encourages parents to not
spend too long talking to any particular child, but to chat for a bit and then
move on to another child. It is a
strange, but wonderful activity. My
husband jokingly referred to it as speed dating for adoption.
The younger kids just think the day is a fun festival—they
can play games, color, win prizes and dance.
The older kids have figured out that this may be one of their last
chances to get adopted and they try to make themselves more marketable. After we got our lunch, we looked for a place
to sit down. A 16-year-old girl named
Jamie smiled at us and waved and we felt like we should sit down with her. Jamie was beautiful and polite and very set
on trying to sell herself to us. We had
already determined that 10 years old was the oldest age that we were open
to. While my heart broke into pieces for
this girl, we knew that it was important to stick to the boundaries that we had
set and prayed about. It has been almost
2 years since that day and I still pray that God gave her the perfect forever
family.
After lunch, we wandered around and watched the kids playing
together. We saw these two young siblings
coloring and decided to join them. Phil
talked with the little boy, who was 10-years-old, about basketball and LeBron
James. I talked to the little girl, who
was 5, about cartoons and watched her color these little coloring sheets. After she colored each page for exactly 10
seconds, she had me help her put them into her drawstring backpack that she got
earlier in the day. They were so sweet
and so tiny, and we went to get more information on them. A caseworker gave us a piece of paper with
their photo and their names on it (and the girl’s name was misspelled).
We went home and immediately emailed our caseworker about
our interest in these kids. We stuck
their photo on our fridge and I showed it to friends and family as if these
were already our children. For those
that don’t know me, I am a sharer. As
soon as I have good news, I want everyone to know. I tend to rush into things as mentioned in an
earlier post, and although I had still heard nothing from our caseworker, I
really felt like these were “our kids”.
After waiting a week without a response from our caseworker, we emailed
again. We contacted CPS and found out
that our caseworker had left the agency.
This occurrence is not uncommon in this type of work, as rates of
burnout are exceptionally high, but it left us pretty bummed out. So, we waited patiently (well, maybe not all
that patiently) until we were assigned a new caseworker.
To be continued…
For more information about adopting teens
Also, some statistics (credit: https://msw.usc.edu/mswusc-blog/adoption-infographic/)
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