I had my first social worker visit today for placement

militarywife2b

And I must say that was not at all what I was expecting and it was FAST. I beleieve all in all she was here 30 mins maybe??? Now we have to wait about a month to see if her supervisior approves our file if so we should start our parenting classes in Jan which means we could be looking at a placement as soon as March or April.

Nature Lover

this is confusing to me and I am trying to understand the timeline and steps in the process. We talked to an agency (which as it turns out is really just the advertising part that does the matches with birthmother and then you work iwth an adotpion agency/attorney. Anyway for them once you signa  contract (and pay them a hefy fee) they work with you for 2 years. If you don't get a placement in the 2 years too bad and you lose your $11,000 - but they do have a 98% placement rate in the 2 years. So I was thinking that we should do the class FIRST, and then get the home study done (I thought that was when you started working with a social worker and get visits from them???) and THEN sign iwth the company once everything was in hand so once the clock started ticking on the 2 years we were ready to go.

Is it different in your area? Or am I just totally off on how this should work? Congrats BTW on getting the first visit out of the way and getting the processmoving forward!

militarywife2b

We are doing foster to adoption so the time line is a little smaller in the beginning but alot longer later on.  In my county you do pre placement paperwork and attend an orientation in which they do the initial background check, then we have an in person interview with a social worker which we did on Monday then the initial home visit done today now we wait to see if the supervisior approves us for foster care then we have to attend 30 hours of parenting classes then finally we can foster a child if during that time the child we are fosterings parents have their rights terminated can we apply to adopt the child that process alone can take a year or more

Nature Lover

Thanks for explaining. We are starting down teh foster/adopt process but also talking to an agency and considering that route. We're just basically pursuing all of our options and when I say "we" I mean "me" as DH ahs been opposed to adoption until jsut recently when he has come around. In FL you take the class and then do homestudy and background check which seems silly and like a waste of taxpayers money b/c if you're going to fail teh background check and/or homestudy best to know that before training the potential foster parents! Or at least that's how it worked 6 years ago when I was going to foster alone and took the class (but then moved and the whole thing got kabashed).