Interesting Information from a New Contact

I was given contact information for a woman who used to work with the Special Adoption coalition here in Oregon as a resource for information about adoption from foster care and to address my concerns over feeling like we've been waiting a long time. She called me on Monday and we had an interesting conversation.

She answered several of my questions with honesty. I asked her if homeschooling was a strike against us. She said that, yes, about half of the case workers out there will turn us aside just because we homeschool. We'd suspected that was true, but hadn't had it confirmed.

She told me that 2 years from when the homestudy is complete is the average wait to be matched with a child unless you're willing to take on the more serious issues of the children who are harder to place.

She said that it was just criminal that we told that we can't adopt from out of state. This is sad to me, as there was a boy who was available in Washington when we first completed our homestudy who seemed like a great match for us. He waited for quite a while.

She told me that we should watch the Northwest Adoption Exchange website, as those kids are really being recruited for. I told her that we do and have put in for many kids from the site, but haven't been selected for them. That's actually when I brought up the homeschooling issue.

After finding out what parameters of children we were interested in, she told us about this great 12 year old who'd just become available. I said, "It sounds like Savanna who had an overwhelming response and we weren't chosen for her." It was. She was surprised about the response.

She suggested that we call up the Boys and Girls Aid Society, as they have a really good feel for which children are having a hard time being placed and will share who's really in need of a home with us. So, that was a good tip.

She also told me that Barbara is an excellent case worker. Thus letting me know that we should stick with who we have, even though thoughts of asking for another case worker has occurred to us from time to time.

It was sort of both encouraging and discouraging. It was good to have the honest response.

I also spoke briefly with Barbara today. It's good that I called her, as she seemed to have missed the questions we had about Tanner that I left on her voice mail on Friday. She said she'd look into if she'd passed on our questions or not and call me back, but when she hadn't called back in over an hour, I got online for a while and then left home and haven't heard back. No new information from her.

By the way, one of the children we put in for and were told that we weren't a good match for, is Shyloe. We were bummed because we'd felt particularly drawn to him. I just looked at his picture and felt a connection. Plus, his issues seemed like ones we could deal with.