Home Study, Post Placement Update

I haven't updated in a few days because we went to NC for Easter. Before I left the new home study agency sent me a packet of materials. One of the documents that we were supposed to sign and return was a post placement agreement. We didn't sign it because the country we are adopting from does not require post placement visits. Not to mention the cost of the post placement visits are going to cost us around $3,600. So I called West VA Dept. of Health and Human Resources and asked if we are required by WV to complete the 6 post placement visits within the first 6 months after returning home with the girls. I talked to the director over policy and she said, "no, not at all". She told me that the country that we adopt from sets the standards for post placement visits since the children are adopted abroad. I looked up the Title 78 that had been referenced in the agreement and it was for foster placements. It had nothing to do with international adoption. The post placement visits are for after foster children have been placed with an adoptive family BEFORE the adoption is finalized. Our adoption will be finalized abroad and the country we are adopting from sets the standard for post placement visits, according to the director of policy. The country we are adopting from requires post placement reports that are to be filled out by the adoptive parents.

So, basically I refused to sign the agreement and the social worker had the director (that I spoke to) write her a letter stating that the post placement requirements are set by the country where the children are being adopted from. But then she conveniently had her to add "unless the adoption agency or country requires post placements, then they are necessary". The letter was then forwarded to the home study agencies licensing specialist for review.

So I am waiting to see if they are going to come back and require us to do the post placements. I personally have a BIG issue with the state giving the individual adoption/home study agency the authority to require post placement visits. What is the point of creating legislation for agencies to follow if they are going to be allowed to make their own rules anyway?

As it is right now, she is planning on coming out this Friday & Saturday and will not require post placement visits, unless licensing tells her that they are required. I will not be paying for post placement visits unless someone shows me the state legislation requiring or authorizing them to do so. I'd rather take my chances on submitting our home study like it is, with a social worker's license, than pay $3,600 for post placement visits that are not mandated by the country we are adopting from or the state of WV! It's not right!

I emailed the Ukrainian Embassy to the United States to find out if we are required to have our home study backed by a child placing/adoption agency or if the social worker's license will suffice, since she works as an independent. They have a direct email for adoption information. Hopefully they will get back to me soon with an answer. I just found this web-site. I wish I had known about it a month ago. I was looking at the U.S. embassy to Ukraine and it basically said the same thing as the state dept. web-site. I think this will be a more accurate source. They should be able to call the SDA and get answers!

This is all such a money racket! All you want to do is give two children a chance in life and it is made near impossible to get anything accomplished!

We are still waiting on our 2nd set of state background checks. Our original social worker is going to call tomorrow to ask them what is going on.

Well, that's about it. Still messing with the home study issue. Trying not to get ripped off.

On a more positive note; we had a wonderful Easter. I got to spend time with my nephew and that was awesome! He's always a lot of fun! We played with bubbles and airplanes. We missed Chloe terribly, but are so grateful that she was safe in Heaven celebrating Easter with our risen Savior! Easter has never been more real or meant more to me than it did this year. We are so blessed to be adopted into God's family through Christ!

Update & Prayer Request

The special needs foster agency is not going to be able to help us, as I anticipated. I talked to our new social worker today (with the more expensive agency) and she is going to come out on March 28th to meet us and "update" our home study. Today when I spoke to her, she was already working on entering our home study info into their agency format. She said that she will have it completed in time for our trip on April 11th. However, after I told her that it had to be apostilled, before we could submit it to the SDA, she seemed less confident.

I would LOVE to have our dossier submitted on our trip, but it's all in God's hands and He has the perfect timing already worked out. Even it we don't get it submitted on our trip, we are still moving ahead quickly and the paperwork is finally coming to an end! I am still thanking & praising God that we received our I-171h (immigration approval)!!

Bottom line is though, that Nadia is scheduled for transfer in July so every day, much less week, is counting against her being transferred.

Also, we are still waiting on our state background check to come back for the second time. The first notary expired on March 18,2008, so it was basically expired when I got it.

So just be praying that they will send our state background check in time for it to be aspotilled and returned to me before I leave April 11th. And also that our home study will be completed, apostilled, and returned to me before April 11th. Thanks!!

Also, I have a prayer request for a infant girl that just had heart surgery. I'm not sure if I can disclose her name, but God knows who she is. She has not been doing well after her heart surgery. They are having to use a pace maker because without it, her heart beats spardically. She also has not been able to be taken off of the respirator. One of her lungs has a defect that will require later surgery, and her good lung is starting to collapse. They are keeping a check on her for pneumonia. Please keep this little baby girl in your prayers and ask God to heal her lungs and heart. Also, please pray for the family that has been waiting to adopt her domestically.

Thank you for all of your prayers!

Great News, Bad News, Another Lesson Begins

The great news is that we received our I-171h today! They told us 6 to 8 weeks and it would have been 5 weeks tomorrow.

The bad news is that the special needs child placing agency that was supposed to take over our home study is now saying that they may not be able to help us. Apparently, she thought that we live in Charleston instead of Charles Town. Now they are saying that they are only licensed in region 1 of WV, which does not include our county. She is going to check with the licensing department to see if they can help us this one time.

I looked up the WV application for Child Placing Agency License, and sure enough you have to list the counties that you are going to work in. I cannot imagine that they will help us now. It seems to me that a STATE license should cover the STATE, not just certain counties. But who knows?

I am really sick by this since I could have had our home study taken care of last Saturday, even though it would have cost us A LOT more money. At this point, I am just fed up and want it done.

I don't really know what we are going to do now. I emailed the other agency to see if she can come out this Saturday.

He's an On Time God!

Just as we thought that we were going to have to go with the new VERY expensive agency tomorrow, our original social worker called and told me that the agency that works with special needs foster children agreed to work with us!

We are working the details out next week, as it was almost 5:00 when the answer was given. We're not sure of the cost involved yet, but the newest agency told our social worker that it would be a small fraction of the cost that the other agency was going to charge. The newest agency said that they would do everything possible to help us get this worked out within the next two weeks. Praise God!

They will meet us and make sure that all of the state and Hague requirements have been met. We just completed our parent training requirements for the Haugue Convention, so that's taken care of.

So, praise God for that HUGE answered prayer!!! Thank you all for your prayers!!! It's funny how God often chooses to work things out at the last minute. I think He's trying to get my attention to have patience and trust in Him more. lol All of the worrying, griping, and stressing that I have done, and here God comes the day before we are getting ready to go with another agency, and spend a crazy amount of money to get it done, with an answer to our prayer. He's probably thinking, "And let that be a lesson to you." lol

Lesson learned, thank you God! Hopefully, I won't need another lesson for a little while! lol And if I do, hopefully I'll handle it with more trust and peace in the Lord. It's hard, when you so badly want to get the children out of there and it seems like things are going wrong and stacking up against "your" plan. But I just have to remember that God has His own plan and sometimes I need to get out of His way!!

I am so thankful that we have a patient God that loves us in our state of humanness.
He must have a sense of humor as He watches us meddle and try to fix what we think is going wrong.

Home Study Visit Planned for Saturday!

We didn't hear anything from our original social worker today, so I guess there was nothing positive to report from her end. I've given her until Friday to get a solution.

I heard back from the other home study agency and she is able to come out this Saturday!! Thank the Lord!!! Thank you all for praying!!! We have planned for her to come out on Saturday, but she is aware that we are giving our original social worker until Friday to find a solution. The main reason we are giving her until Friday is because of the expense.

So, more than likely on Saturday and Sunday, we will have our new social worker coming in and "updating" our home study. She said she can have it completed it 2 weeks as long as we get our file back from our original social worker. If not, she will have to run our child abuse clearance reports again. I don't believe that it will be an issue.

We are still waiting to see if immigration is going to approve us off of the original home study. That could potentially be another set back. It's been one month since USCIS received our home study. Our notice said we should receive our I-171h within 6 to 8 weeks from the receipt of the home study. So we should have either an approval or rejection within the next 2 to four weeks. I'm praying that it will be an approval, closer to 2 weeks so that we can get our dossier submitted before my trip in April. We were hoping to be able to hand deliver it to the SDA, when I go next month, but right now it's not looking so good for the home team. However, we're praying for a miracle!! It's in God's hands!

Day 20 and No Solution

We are now waiting until tomorrow to give our original social worker a chance to rectify the situation. Hopefully, she can come up with something that is cheaper and faster.

Our facilitator was supposed to call the other social worker with the child placement agency today to see if she can come out earlier or at least hold her schedule open for March 21st until we find out if our original social worker comes up with a solution for this mess. I have not heard anything from our facilitator as to if he made contact with the new social worker yet today.

That's all. Day 20 of no solid answers.

Still Trying to Work This Out

The last post I mentioned an agency that was possibly going to help us get our home study problem straightened out. I heard back from her today and she agreed to work with us and take over our home study. This is great news, but at the same time it has turned out to be much more expensive than we had anticipated and also it is going to set us further behind than we were originally told. She can't even come out to our house until March 21st (at the earliest) and then it will take her 2 weeks from there. We may have to do this as a last resort.

Our original social worker has made some calls to her contacts at a couple of child placing agencies to see if she can find someone to "take over" and perform this faster & more cost effectively. Honestly, I am praying that she can find someone and it will work out. I don't care who does it as long as they have a valid child placing agency license and can do it fast! Our first option doesn't appear to be that fast, but it could end up being our only hope. I should know more later today, I hope!

On the positive side, all of our dossier documents will be notarized and completed, as long as our bank notary will go down the block to notarize our medical statements, tomorrow. That is with the exception of our USCIS approval and state background check that should be here in the next couple of weeks. USCIS has our home study and I was told that we should be hearing something soon (as long as they are ok with our home study, pray that they will be). Brenda's other clients haven't had any issues with USCIS not approving them due to the home study, so I'm just praying that we won't either! We had already received our state background check a month ago, but the notary's commission is going to expire 3/18/08. So now we are having to wait for his new stamp to arrive because he is the only person that notarizes the background checks for the state of WV. Absolutely ridiculous! And from what I was told he has a pile of background checks to notarize once he gets his stamp. Hopefully ours won't be lost & will be sent out quickly!! It just makes me nervous knowing that our background check has been lying on someone's desk for a month, especially when he is piled up with tons of other requests! I'm just praying and trying to trust God in all of this. It is certainly a test of my faith. But it's all in God's hands, I've learned that.

Please keep us in your prayers and pray that God will give us guidance as to which direction to go with the home study issue. Either way, we need to get on the ball ASAP, because time is ticking away for Nadia. :( Also, please pray that the rest of our documents will come through quickly and accurate.

Thanks for all of your prayers and support, we really appreciate it!

Still Working on the Home Study Agency Dilemma

We are still working on the dilemma with our home study agency license. It has been a big mess, but I think our facilitator has found a solution. Basically, our home study was completed by a certified social worker operating independently through her own business. She in no way violated any laws set by the state of WV. The problem is that we have to submit a home study agency license with our dossier. Our home study agent does not have a home study agency license, because there is no such license in the state of WV. However, the country that we are adopting from requires that license before they will approve us to adopt.

We have been very concerned that we would have to repeat our home study, which would mean that we would have to completely start over with EVERYTHING that we have done up until this point for our dossier. In addition to the two months worth of work that would be lost, we would also have to pay between $2,000 to $3,000 for a new home study. Also, the adoption agency that would perform it, this time, told me it would take 3 months to complete it.

As of right now, it appears that our facilitator has found an angel to help us out! She works for a child placement agency and has an "adoption agency" license, which the girls' country will accept! The problem is that her office is located over 400 miles away from us. She is the only person that we have found that is willing to take over from our existing home study without making us complete the entire thing over again. It would cost us a few hundred dollars, rather than a few thousand, and she says she could have it completed within 2 weeks!! She is going to check with one more agency near us to see if they will help us by taking over. This agency that she is calling has refused to do the same in the past. If they will not help us, she may. We haven't received a definite answer from her yet, but we are praying so hard that she will be able to help us. It's a really far drive for her and we are just praying that she will do this for us if we pay her extra mileage and get her a hotel room.

Please be praying that this will work out! We can't afford to lose 5 months of our time because of Nadia. Nadia is scheduled for transfer in July. I realize that whatever happens is because it is God's will, but we are praying and hoping for a quick and effective solution!

I will update and let everyone know what transpires as soon as I get an answer today.

Thanks so much for your prayers and for following our journey. Please remember all of the little orphans in the world in your prayers. Also, please remember Dylan Pierce in your prayers. He is the newborn son to my cousin Brandy and her husband Cliff Pierce. He was suctioned out at birth and this caused a fracture in his skull. He still has some swelling from it, but all in all appears to be doing very well! He passed his hearing screening Monday, and that was an answered prayer! He failed his initial hearing screening due to the swelling on his little head. He has another hearing test in 6 months. Pray that will also be a praise report! Thanks so much for remembering all of these requests in your prayers! It means a lot to us!

Welcome New Visitors

I just posted this link to Chloe's website, so I wanted to say "thanks for visiting" to anyone that might be stopping by for the first time. Our adoption process started in January so if you are interested in reading earlier posts, just check out our archive.

Thanks for taking the time to read our blog!!