We met with Elizabeth, our caseworker at Arizona's Children Association, last evening. She is required to visit us quarterly. An update on our adoption certification: On Friday, the whole home study packaging (including my approved fingerprints!) went to the commissioner. So, we're hoping this week or next we'll have our certification! Thank you, everyone, for your prayers in moving this forward!
For the rest of the visit, she asked us some questions about the adoption process, and we had to think about any strengths/needs we have. We need to get a pool fence, and we talked a lot about how we're going to manage our time and finances with both of us working and then bringing children into our lives. We discussed the resources that will be available to us through different state and city programs, and those will definitely help. I'm sure we'll figure it out once the children are here; a lot will depend on their ages.
The other big item that came up is that we now also need to be licensed for foster care. From the beginning they told us if we were only interested in adoption, to only get certified to adopt, rather than both. But, CDS has changed a certain policy that makes it now more advantageous for us to have both. Here are the details: Some children are "legally free," meaning all parental rights have been severed, and they may be adopted. By having our adoption certification, we are eligible to adopt them. Then, there are some children who are not yet legally free, but will most likely become free for adoption. The caseworker for the children in these cases likes to try to get them adopted before they are completely free--it's very hard for children not to be connected to anyone. And, the longer they're in the system, the slimmer the chances are of them ever being adopted. Anyway, long story short, is that if we're not licensed for foster care, then we aren't even eligible to try to adopt kids in this siuation. So, there will be far fewer children available for us to adopt. We now are working on meeting the additional requirements to become licensed for foster care.
Luckily, our home study is complete for adoption, so it won't take too much extra work to get our foster license. Elizabeth thinks it will only take 2-4 weeks. With adoption, WE are certified, but with foster care, our HOME is licensed. So, we need to do some safety things in our house, such as installing the pool fence, putting fire extinguishers on each floor, adding a carbon monoxide detector near the kitchen, locking up all medications and chemicals, etc. Then, an inspector will visit and make sure our home meets all the requirements.
We're still very eager to adopt kids, so we are happy it seems to be progressing. It's been discouraging to wait so long for our certification, and it was good to meet with Elizabeth to get us thinking about it again. It's a balancing act between getting your hopes up and having to be patient! We'll keep you posted! j&c
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