March - Adoptive Parents and Hopeful Adoptive Parents

AnnieR81

What route (Foster Care adoption, domestic, international)?

Where are you in the process right now (just thinking, home study, waiting for match, etc.)

Anything new and exciting happening this month in your process?

Any questions?

Any tips for the steps you’ve passed?

GTKY (Get to know you) What is your favorite part of Spring in your neighborhood?

AnnieR81

What route (Foster Care adoption, domestic, international)? Domestic Infant Adoption

Where are you in the process right now (just thinking, home study, waiting for match, etc.) Renewing our Homestudy. Had to increase my education hours by 11 hours this year and take a water safety class all in a couple weeks. Social worker did our home visit today.

Anything new and exciting happening this month in your process? Last month we were almost parents! The mother ended up choosing a different couple, but we were so close!

Last week I spoke with a 2nd agency we are considering to work with. They match late in pregnancy and give the adoptive parents more opportunities to say if they want to be considered by birth mother or not.

Any questions? How many agencies are you currently contracted with? How many times has your profile been shown since you contracted with them?

Any tips for the steps you’ve passed? Perservere. Sometimes it is just a waiting game.

GTKY (Get to know you) What is your favorite part of Spring in your neighborhood? It's tourist season here in Florida which means the farmers markets, food festivals and other great community events are popping up every weekend. Great time to get outside and find some distractions.

Axl2

What route (Foster Care adoption, domestic, international)?
Domestic adoption

Where are you in the process right now (just thinking, home study, waiting for match, etc.)
Waiting it will be 3 years in April that we have been waiting with our profile only been shown once. Probably won't do the update until July or August. It took forever for the last update to be done with my mom passing away and the social worker needing some more information from us. I'm hoping this is our year, but it is getting a little easier.

Anything new and exciting happening this month in your process?
Nothing

Any questions?
none at the moment

Any tips for the steps you’ve passed?
Be patient continue to live your life the journey can be a long one.

GTKY (Get to know you) What is your favorite part of Spring in your neighborhood?
The snow melting and warmer weather!

We are only with one agency I believe we could be with more but we would have to start the process all over. Also the cost aspect of it would be to much so far with our agency we have paid $10,000. I couldn't imagine having to spend that at another agency. The only thing I do wish is that we went with another agency I really do feel like we are just number and all about the money.

 

britters314

What route (Foster Care adoption, domestic, international)? Foster care

Where are you in the process right now (just thinking, home study, waiting for match, etc.) We have a placement (he's been with us over a year) and it's looking like both birth parents are going to voluntarily let us adopt, which is a lot quicker and easier than the court taking away parental rights and pursuing adoption.

Anything new and exciting happening this month in your process? We are meeting up with the birth father this month to discuss what adoption would look like, how much contact he wants, etc.

Any questions? Nope, not right now

Any tips for the steps you’ve passed? Try to keep a good relationship with the birth parents. If you are fostering, let the social worker deal with all the drama or messy stuff that comes up.

GTKY (Get to know you) What is your favorite part of Spring in your neighborhood? We only sometimes get Spring here. Often it just goes straight from winter weather to summer weather. I think my favorite part of spring is just having more hours of sunlight. It's so nice to finally have it still be sunny when I get home from work.

AnnieR81

@Axl2 Have you looked to see if there are other agencies that will take your homestudy and profile book from your current agency? That should cut down the costs on contracting with a second agency. Should only need to pay for application fee and a homestudy review.

It took me almost 2 years to find our 2nd agency as they do not advertise. Ended up finding them via Facebook.

AnnieR81

@britters314 Wow! Things have been moving very fast for you lately. Congratulations! Hope things continue to go smoothly.

Axl2

@AnnieR81, I have talked all the agencies in my area. they require you to start all over and pay all the fees. If we went started over at another agency we would be at the bottom of the list. The last time I talked to agency we were #40. How often do you contact your agency?

AnnieR81

@Axl2 I contact our agency every 4 months. They won't give us an exact placement on the list like #49, but they will tell us how many times our profile was shown to an expectant mother. Sometimes it takes them a few days to get back to me if I reach out via email.

Axl2

I contact the agency about every 3-4 months. I send an email to the receptionist as the social worker sometimes doesn’t even respond. And now she in school which she didn’t even let us know. The last time I contacted them we moved to #37 but our profile hasn’t been shown. I probably won’t ask again until our update. I’m not sure why our profile hasn’t been shown and it’s getting frustrating. I noticed more people asking why we don’t have any kids yet. I just say oh we like to travel or we are not ready.