Chris and I finally received some actual good news this week, which is much more encouraging than just the absence of bad news! On Tuesday we got an email from our social worker, Charles, asking us to call him. When we did he told us that he spoke with the social worker of the 10-year-old we are interested in. He said that she did not have any reservations about us as a placement for the child, including the fact that we are a same-sex couple and that we live 500 miles away. Apparently there are no family ties requiring him to stay in LA, so there's no problem moving out of the LA area. This also means that if we move ahead it would probably be a low-risk placement, since without close family it's unlikely that anyone would contest the placement. After hearing a relatively brief description of his situation and history, we didn't hesitate to tell Charles to proceed to the next step.
SETTING UP THE MEETINGS
Once Charles gets the go ahead, Chris and I can set up a time to have a telephone conference call with both social workers. This will be sort of an interview where the child's social worker gets to ask us questions to supplement what she knows about us from our home study, and where we get to ask more specific questions about the child. If after this meeting we decide we still want to proceed, we will set up a face-to-face "disclosure" meeting in LA where we can review all pertinent documentation like court records, medical records, education plans, etc. We would also try to plan to meet the youth while we're there. Usually families need to meet the child several times before a match is completed, and since he's so far away we want to make each trip to LA count!
As always, I will post more information as I get it. I'm hesitant to post the child's name yet, partly to preserve his anonymity and partly because I want to wait to see if this is really happening first. But once we know for sure you can bet I'll tell everyone all about him!
Thursday, June 18, 2009
Friday, June 12, 2009
SOMETIMES NO NEWS REALLY IS GOOD NEWS
NOT A LOT TO REPORT
Another two weeks have gone by since my last post and still not a lot has happened. However the little that has happened so far has been encouraging. Our social worker, Charles, is still waiting to hear from the social worker of the 10-year-old in Los Angeles we're asking about. Basically she told Charles she would call him on Monday (i.e. four days ago) to discuss the youth. Charles has told us that this is a very good sign. If she weren't considering us as a placement for him she wouldn't call Charles to discuss it, she would just say no. In a brief email to Charles she also wanted to make sure we were aware that the youth's sexual orientation has not become evident yet (she mentions this because it does say in our home study that we are looking to adopt a gay youth, although we recently decided to expand our search), and that if we proceed we would need to come down to LA a few times to meet with him before he moves to the Bay Area. Again, this is encouraging because she wouldn't say this if we weren't being considered. Lastly, she did send Charles another email on Thursday apologizing for not calling when she said she would and saying that it is no reflection on our candidacy. Now it's just a matter of waiting for her to actually call!
TIME TO VENT
Now that we've been getting some fairly encouraging news though, I find myself back where I was the last time we were waiting to hear about a youth that we were interested in and which ultimately fell through. I'm actually reluctant to post about this possible new match for fear that I may jinx it, or at least that I may be reprimanded by well-meaning friends for getting my hopes up too soon. But carrying it around with me without verbalizing these feelings is going to make me explode!
Basically, whenever we do anything these days I think about how it will be different when we have a child. Will he like to travel as much as we do, and what destinations will be of interest to everyone? What foods will he like and dislike, and how will it affect our eating and shopping habits? What activities will we enjoy doing together? And of course, when I think about us going on a vacation or a shopping trip or an afternoon in the city with our future son, I can't help but imagine it's the boy whose picture we saw on the foster care website. I am trying to keep this in check, at least until we have met him and have gotten the go-ahead from his social worker, but that is definitely easier said than done. That’s probably the main reason why waiting for his social worker to contact us is so difficult… if this is not going to work, then don’t string us along. Just get it over with, like pulling off a band-aid, so we (or more accurately, I) don’t get attached before we’ve even met!
Hopefully we will hear from Charles today and get some good news before the weekend!
Another two weeks have gone by since my last post and still not a lot has happened. However the little that has happened so far has been encouraging. Our social worker, Charles, is still waiting to hear from the social worker of the 10-year-old in Los Angeles we're asking about. Basically she told Charles she would call him on Monday (i.e. four days ago) to discuss the youth. Charles has told us that this is a very good sign. If she weren't considering us as a placement for him she wouldn't call Charles to discuss it, she would just say no. In a brief email to Charles she also wanted to make sure we were aware that the youth's sexual orientation has not become evident yet (she mentions this because it does say in our home study that we are looking to adopt a gay youth, although we recently decided to expand our search), and that if we proceed we would need to come down to LA a few times to meet with him before he moves to the Bay Area. Again, this is encouraging because she wouldn't say this if we weren't being considered. Lastly, she did send Charles another email on Thursday apologizing for not calling when she said she would and saying that it is no reflection on our candidacy. Now it's just a matter of waiting for her to actually call!
TIME TO VENT
Now that we've been getting some fairly encouraging news though, I find myself back where I was the last time we were waiting to hear about a youth that we were interested in and which ultimately fell through. I'm actually reluctant to post about this possible new match for fear that I may jinx it, or at least that I may be reprimanded by well-meaning friends for getting my hopes up too soon. But carrying it around with me without verbalizing these feelings is going to make me explode!
Basically, whenever we do anything these days I think about how it will be different when we have a child. Will he like to travel as much as we do, and what destinations will be of interest to everyone? What foods will he like and dislike, and how will it affect our eating and shopping habits? What activities will we enjoy doing together? And of course, when I think about us going on a vacation or a shopping trip or an afternoon in the city with our future son, I can't help but imagine it's the boy whose picture we saw on the foster care website. I am trying to keep this in check, at least until we have met him and have gotten the go-ahead from his social worker, but that is definitely easier said than done. That’s probably the main reason why waiting for his social worker to contact us is so difficult… if this is not going to work, then don’t string us along. Just get it over with, like pulling off a band-aid, so we (or more accurately, I) don’t get attached before we’ve even met!
Hopefully we will hear from Charles today and get some good news before the weekend!
Monday, June 1, 2009
LATEST UPDATE
I realize it’s been over a month since I’ve posted anything, but there hasn't been much to report on. For the most part, Chris and I have just been waiting patiently these past few months for our social worker to give us the good news that he found a youth for us to adopt. Unfortunately that hasn't happened yet, but things have been picking up over the past two weeks.
When we first started this process I think we were under the assumption that there would be a huge number of kids available for adoption immediately and that they would be lined up waiting for us to choose one. After all, we have been looking to adopt a gay teenager, not exactly a demographic in high demand. However we are finding out that it's harder than we thought it would be to find a match. Maybe it's because the parameters of our search have been rather narrow, as we are specifically looking for a boy available for a single placement (no siblings). Regardless, it is taking longer to find a match than we expected, so Chris and I are now considering expanding our search to younger kids outside of Pride and Joy, i.e. not gay, or at least not old enough to identify one way or the other. We’re figuring that we will look for boys age 8-12, still with no siblings. We're not quite ready to take on 2 or more kids at once!
WAITING TO HEAR ABOUT A YOUNGER CHILD
Now that we are looking at younger kids, we did ask our social worker to find out about a boy that a friend of ours told us about. His profile had just been added to the foster care matching website and he did seem like a good match for us, at least from the one-paragraph description of him they posted. He's 10 years old and as far as we know he is not a Pride and Joy candidate but that's fine with us. Our social worker has already contacted his social worker, which is basically how all of our communication has to happen, and we are waiting to get more information so we can decide if we think he would be a good match. That is, if he would even be available to us, since he is located in Los Angeles and the last child from LA we asked about didn't want to move away.
TWO PRIDE AND JOY YOUTHS
In addition to the 10-year-old there have also been two Pride and Joy kids that have been brought to our attention in the past couple of weeks. One was living out of state and was being returned to the foster care system in the Bay Area and needed an emergency placement. Unfortunately there were a number of educational and behavioral issues that Chris and I didn't feel prepared to deal with. We also didn't want to be rushed into an emergency placement since we want to take our time and make sure any possible match will be a good one, so we decided not to proceed with this child. Of course we both felt bad about this but when I called the social worker the next day I was told that there was another family who wanted to take him in, so it seemed the situation was going to work out for everyone. As for the second youth, our social worker is still waiting to get more information about him. Hopefully we'll be hearing about him this week, but there's not much we can do other than wait patiently. I'll be sure to post any updates!
When we first started this process I think we were under the assumption that there would be a huge number of kids available for adoption immediately and that they would be lined up waiting for us to choose one. After all, we have been looking to adopt a gay teenager, not exactly a demographic in high demand. However we are finding out that it's harder than we thought it would be to find a match. Maybe it's because the parameters of our search have been rather narrow, as we are specifically looking for a boy available for a single placement (no siblings). Regardless, it is taking longer to find a match than we expected, so Chris and I are now considering expanding our search to younger kids outside of Pride and Joy, i.e. not gay, or at least not old enough to identify one way or the other. We’re figuring that we will look for boys age 8-12, still with no siblings. We're not quite ready to take on 2 or more kids at once!
WAITING TO HEAR ABOUT A YOUNGER CHILD
Now that we are looking at younger kids, we did ask our social worker to find out about a boy that a friend of ours told us about. His profile had just been added to the foster care matching website and he did seem like a good match for us, at least from the one-paragraph description of him they posted. He's 10 years old and as far as we know he is not a Pride and Joy candidate but that's fine with us. Our social worker has already contacted his social worker, which is basically how all of our communication has to happen, and we are waiting to get more information so we can decide if we think he would be a good match. That is, if he would even be available to us, since he is located in Los Angeles and the last child from LA we asked about didn't want to move away.
TWO PRIDE AND JOY YOUTHS
In addition to the 10-year-old there have also been two Pride and Joy kids that have been brought to our attention in the past couple of weeks. One was living out of state and was being returned to the foster care system in the Bay Area and needed an emergency placement. Unfortunately there were a number of educational and behavioral issues that Chris and I didn't feel prepared to deal with. We also didn't want to be rushed into an emergency placement since we want to take our time and make sure any possible match will be a good one, so we decided not to proceed with this child. Of course we both felt bad about this but when I called the social worker the next day I was told that there was another family who wanted to take him in, so it seemed the situation was going to work out for everyone. As for the second youth, our social worker is still waiting to get more information about him. Hopefully we'll be hearing about him this week, but there's not much we can do other than wait patiently. I'll be sure to post any updates!
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