Developments

DHS must have sensed a disturbance in the Force... We got a last minute appointment today, drove to Paul's Valley (which is apparently somewhere in Texas), and entered inquiries on a dozen or so kids.

And the beat goes on...

3/27: Lisa sends email about latest list of kids from DHS.

4/4: Lisa sends email reminder.

4/5: DHS responds, can't meet until "late next week" at the earliest. Lisa immediately asks for an appointment time.

4/11: "Late next week" is now "late this week", as in tomorrow or the day after. Still no response.

Once more into the breach...

We have another meeting with DHS coming up soon. We've got a new list of kids that was already weeks old by the time it got to us. We responded immediately, and of course waited another two to three weeks for a response. They're making another list Tuesday, and our meeting is later in the week.

In this age of instantaneous global communications, it is seriously disheartening to deal with a 19th-century communication lag on something as important as the welfare of children.

As expected...

...the two girls we inquired about have already been placed. Only took DHS 2 months to get back to us from the time of the original match. I think they're competing with Dell for worst customer service.

So here's where we are...

Right after Thanksgiving, when we had been trying to contact our social worker for about a month to find out what was going on with our case, we received a list of children for whom we had been "staffed" (matched). The rules state that we have to arrange a meeting with our social worker to come into the DHS office to read the profiles. The profiles cannot be copied or taken from the DHS office, and the only person who will talk to us is our social worker.

Except that she doesn't. We immediately sent her an email and asked for a meeting. A week went by. Two. Three. Lisa followed up with another email. Another week. Another. Those wondering why I don't post much lately should understand that what I'm mostly doing is waiting. Endlessly waiting. Just to receive a response to an email or voicemail. For weeks at a time.

Finally, last week Lisa sent another followup, this time being a little snippy, and finally got a response. We arranged a meeting and went in to read the profiles. In the process, we learned that another staffing meeting had taken place and we'd been matched with a whole new set of kids, and no information was available about the first set. So apparently the game is to play with a one month information lag.

The profiles are woefully depressing to read. The litany of abuses and horrors these children have suffered reads like an account of the Inquisition. It seriously makes us wonder how much we can handle, and at this point we're just hoping to be able to find some kids we can work with. We've also asked to be signed up on the national websites, which apparently also requires some kind of OK from our gatekeeper social worker.

We have formally inquired about the status of two little girls, aged 5 and 3. We feel fairly confident they're already taken, but we'll see what happens. Of course, in my mind I've already walked them down the aisle. It's crazy what this process does to your emotions.

Friends of ours who started at roughly the same time have had their kids at home for 6 months now. They went overseas to adopt. After dealing with DHS this past year, I'm beginning to understand why people do that.

And out of the blue...

...just received first list of adoption candidates from DHS. Suddenly finding it difficult to breathe.

This is the worst

Today's parenting class topic: child abuse and neglect. AKA "all the different ways that someone could have ****ed up your adoptive child." It's like a parade of demons.