The agency through which we adopted our daughter posted on their Facebook yesterday a blog post called "8 Tips on Adoption." It's a worthwhile read for those considering adoption. I would especially highlight the first tip: learn all you can.
Per my social worker's suggestion of a few weeks ago, I contacted a local agency that works to place waiting children. Among my other questions, I asked if this agency would accept our home study as a transfer (this is not uncommon, although there is a cost involved). The adoption specialist told me that our home study is not sufficient since we do not have the national PRIDE (Parent Resource for Information, Development, Education) training and that other states will not place children with us because we don't meet the standards. Naturally, this threw me into a tailspin. No agency will provide the PRIDE training for us unless we commit to working with them, and the only place that offers it online won't work with individuals.
Next, I contacted our state foster care system to see if they would allow me to participate in the training. The specialist at the state told me that not having PRIDE training means that we cannot adopt from our home state of NJ, since NJ only places waiting children in homes that are specifically foster/adoption licensed, but she then told me that we should be good to adopt from any other state. Sometimes, it's hard to know who has the whole story...
Some good [GREAT] news in all of this... A week ago today, our social worker received an email from the caseworker for the sibling set that started our journey (the one I grieved last year and then saw again in April...I wrote about them in my last post). The boys' caseworker wanted to know if we were still interested and if we would also consider the younger sister.
Wow. Four more kids. Crazy.
We responded that we indeed were still very interested. Two days later, the caseworker sent our social worker about 50 pages of information on background, reasons for removal from home, health history, etc. She also asked us to call the current foster mom.
Yup, it's been a crazy week. We're definitely on a wild ride...
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