Nerdvana

So we’re getting into the final stages of the foster care / adoption process and I thought I’d start to share my experiences and observations here. First a bit of back story.

My wife and I have been married for nearly 13 years. We got married fairly young but it held together despite what people said. We had always said we didn’t want to have kids until we had gotten our act together. We finally decided the time was right about 5 years ago and have been trying ever since. Adoption was always in the plan. We figured we’d have one of our own and adopt one. There are so many children already in this world without a loving family it seemed wrong to “overpopulate” it with more.

But after 5 years of trying, nothing but disappointment and heart ache. We did the Doctor thing in which we were told, she was fine and I was to blame. It was devistating. However we regrouped and strengthened our resolve to go the adoption route. We began the MAPP classes in October of 2008. MAPP class is basically the Department of Children and Families way of scaring the HELL out of anyone thinking about foster care. It’s a serious dose  of reality. They pull no punches and lay out everything pretty straight.

There was intense homework every week, heartbreaking stories, and starke realities show that we live in a world that really doesn’t hold a lot of value in our most precious resource, our children. It made us really rethink the way we planned to parent and we learned a lot. We had to write our “life stories” and there was a lot of paperwork to do for them to build a profile for us. Finally in early December we completed the training. We then had to get fingerprinted and background screened and then we waited…and waited…and waited. Because again because this society doesn’t hold much value for children the program is extremely underfunded and understaffed. There is one case worker who handles the home studies and certification process for ALL of Orange county. And she was severly backed up.

Finally in mid June we had our home inspections. We sat down and interviewed with the woman. She toured our home making notes about various safety concerns. We passed with flying colors. Really only a few things needed to be completed in order to pass on the second round where the case worker who does the certification comes out.

So that’s where we sit now. We’re waiting for the second part of the home study. And if all goes well we should be good to go in about a month. I’ll keep you updated.

Trevor