Well...
I feel like I have so much to say but I don't even know where to begin. First, we did get our home study completed so we are officially home study ready! It was a HUGE relief to know that we have made it this far and that we are finally getting close to bringing home the newest member(s) of our family.
The relief of having the home study complete was quickly overshadowed by the fact that we had no idea where to go from here. I had incorrectly assumed that upon completion of our home study our home study writer would have the ability to register us in WARE, giving us the ability to search for waiting children and also giving social workers throughout the state the ability to find and contact us. Apparently things have changed and as of right now we are still waiting on an answer concerning whether or not we will be able to be registered in WARE. Without it we have no real way of connecting with children or social workers and essentially rendering our home study useless. I honestly can't even begin to explain how disappointed and frustrated we are at this point in the process.
We had eventually given up on the idea of using an agency to help us with the adoption after the advice of many people and agencies along with the fact that so many agencies didn't want to work with us because of the time constraints (we honestly don't know how long the Army will allow us to stay at Fort Lewis). At the time it wasn't a problem but from what I am now being told Pierce County (our county) has recently gotten rid of their foster to adopt program and so there is a lot of confusion about what is going on with that. As I understand it (and I don't understand it at all...) what it means is that state social workers will no longer facilitate the adoption of children in the foster care system, thus forcing any parents who are wanting to adopt children who are in the foster system to use an agency. This is a HUGE problem for us as we don't have an agency and are not currently foster licensed.
Right now I am waiting to hear back from the social worker who wrote our home study. He will be able to verify whether or not we can be registered in WARE. After we hear from him I'm hoping to have a clearer picture of what we need to do next, but right now I feel like we are just floundering. I have no idea where to go and what to do. We may need to start finding an agency who will work with us, we may need to become foster licensed... we have no idea what it will take, but we will do anything and everything that we have to in order to make this work!
Please pray as we continue forward in this process. Pray that we can figure out how to work our way through this system. If we have to hire an agency please pray that we choose the right one and that things move QUICKLY! And most importantly please pray for all the children who are caught up in this mess of foster care because they are the ones that are truly suffering through all of this.
One positive that has come out of this for us is that it has refreshed our passion for the children in the foster system and reminded us just how much they need to be able to be in a "forever family."
Love you all,
B, E & H
No comments:
Post a Comment