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.

Quote of the Day

"The victory condition, the highest goal you can achieve, is to make your children exactly as f***ed up as you are."
-- Jerry Holkins, Penny Arcade

Oh yeah...

"Almost" 18 years of marriage has turned into "actual" 18 years of marriage. Guess I'd better update the sidebar.

Into the breach

This past week we completed about 90% of the verbal colonoscopy that is the home study process. The contractor, a pleasant middle-aged man named Dennis, came over and interrogated interviewed us for about 8 hours, 5 on one visit and 3 on a follow-up. It was exhausting, to say the least, but nowhere near as much as the class we attended on Saturday.

We have 9 sessions to attend, 2 per Saturday for the next 5 weeks, with a break on Labor Day weekend. We've now completed the first two, which are largely introductory and relatively benign. Most of the conversation seemed to be about navigating the bureaucracy, managing expectations, and keeping DHS looking like a wonderful shiny happy organization. After all, it's for the children.

That last part comes off a little cynical, perhaps because it is. There's a lot of whitewashing going on, even when the folks sitting at my table and directly across from me brought up their direct, recent experiences with the bureaucratic heavy-handedness of that same organization. Like 80% of the class, they're involved in a kinship adoption, but for some reason one of the children involved has been institutionalized and they're getting stonewalled by DHS regarding her care. They're being told quite bluntly that not only is she "none of their concern", but if they don't drop it DHS can and will take the other kids away from them too. It's downright surreal, coming from an organization which throughout the class had been portrayed as having nothing but every child's happiness and well-being in mind.

Granted, much of this may be perception and perspective, but government bureaucracies are notoriously intractable, so I'm inclined to believe the gist if remaining skeptical on the particulars.

That said, the class itself isn't particularly difficult, since like all government programs it is made to accommodate the lowest common denominator. For example, I distinctly remember reading one section which painstakingly described a concept in several sentences that could have been summarized in a single word had the writer assumed the intended audience to have a high-school graduate's vocabulary. Most of what is said is basic common sense -- perhaps not to some, but to anyone with a little brains and a modicum of compassion. There are a few legal factoids that were new to me, but they could have been summarized on a 3x5 index card. I didn't really need 6 hours of lecture to pick them up, and they mostly pertained to foster families, which doesn't really apply to us.

The greatest danger of the class is boredom and fatigue. My brain checked out with about 30 minutes left in the second session. Luckily all they were doing at that point was reviewing -- again -- those half-dozen items which had been explained in grueling detail for the previous 2.5 hours. Not even the mighty power of 5-Hour Energy could keep me focused at that point.

Lest it sound like I'm being snarky (which I totally am), I should give props to the ladies doing the teaching of the class. They have a required syllabus handed down from on high, and they're not really allowed to deviate from it much. But they are doing their level best to keep it as interesting as possible, even though the curriculum has all the flavor and consistency of oatmeal and they're basically allotted 5 metaphorical raisins to drop in it.

Only 7 more sessions to go.