Unexpected Delays

My original plan was to write this blog sequentially until it was caught up to modern day, but we got a bit of an emotional gut-bunch related to our home study (our next step), that I want to touch on.

First, a quick time table to give some frame of reference:

•  July 2015 - Informational meeting
• August 2015 - Mandatory DHS training
• September 2015 - Application and intake interview
• October-November 2015 - Paperwork! Oh god the paperwork
• December 2015 - We lose our initial clinician and wait to get reassigned. We're given the expectation of a home study by late-Febraury
• January 2016 - Individual intake interviews. We get told we'll have some "homework" to improve our home study that may delay the timing of the home study.

And that's where we're at as of a few days ago. 

Three weeks went by after our interviews and we hadn't heard from the clinician. B&G Aid has been understandably understaffed after our original clinician left.

When she does get back to us with our "homework," it's a list of 10 action items to beef up our appearance to case workers. Some of them are things like "Attend this webinar in April" or "Go to this training class on May 21." 

I asked for an expected timeline based on this list and here's what I got back:

So I don’t have a clear timeline on when your home study will be completed right now. I don’t plan on coming out in late February at this time...  I think you need to take a few months to complete as many of these items so they can be incorporated into your study... The reality is the age range you are looking appeals to many families, and if I were to write your study right now, I don’t think you would be selected based on my experience of what caseworkers are looking for. My goal is to increase your exposure to children, expand your knowledge of adoption and attachment issues, and increase your support system to include families who have adoption experience. 

I felt a little crushed. More than a little really. I didn't realize we were talking about months of delay of our home study. Months of delay of the last piece we need before we're "in" and can start looking for a child. 

This was honestly very disheartening to hear. Logically it makes sense I suppose, but I'm struggling with realizing we're in some way factually unfit to parent. I know what we are looking for is limited, but I hadn't really faced the fact that basically we weren't good enough.

Yeah... we weren't really eased into this in either of our intake interviews. Just told we'd get some homework to make us look better and that the specifics we were looking for would make our options pretty limited.

So now it's on to pursuing a list of things we need to do so we look better on paper. Never mind that even our clinician joked that we don't have any unresolved "drama" like a lot of families, we both have healthy and strong relationships with friends and family, one of us is a teacher, and we have a solid and reliable income with good benefits.

I've never had a bad resume before. I guess it's time to do our homework. Anyone got a toddler we can borrow?