This evening we had our second homestudy meeting. This time around was much better than the first:) No traffic jams, no terrential down pours, wind or hail, and the butterflies have nearly ended. We spoke with our social worker for a little over an hour about our relationship with family members again (mainly just seeing if we have spoken with them about why we feel they are so disconnected this time around), our marriage, parenting styles, etc. The marriage question is always the hardest for me. As we all know I am not the most talkative outgoing person you have ever been around...so you can see how this made me a little uncomfertable. She asked the questions "what attracted you to your spouse", "when did you know you had fallen in love", "how did you know he was the one", "what is the best/worst thing about your marriage"? I don't know, read what I said in the last homestudy or in my 15 page autobiography you are holding. Don't get me wrong, I love Justin and he is a great husband and terrific father...I just don't know how to express it in words in front of a stranger.
So anyways after we managed to get through all of that we discussed more about the child in which we are hoping to adopt. Justin is still a bit scared about adopting a child with special needs and is thinking of just putting on the homestudy that we are only open to healthy infants. I on the other hand feel so deeply about all of these babies and older children and want to give them there forever family as well. If it is just a minor need that can be corected I think we should be open to that child. The social worker told us to discuss it a bit more and to come to a joint decision about it. She also told us to do what is best for our family but to think about how it could affect Lydia. With Lydia being such an active, outgoing child with such a bright personality it may be a bit more difficult to have a child with a specail need. It could possibly hold Lydia back from doing what she wants to do or hurt the child with the need in not being able to participate.
As we were sitting in the office she had just recieved an email with more information about the program. Cathwel is telling all of the agencies to expect a wait of 2 years but things could and have been happening a sooner (referrals have been given to families that have waited between 5-10 months for the past year:) They are expecting the wait for healthy and minor/correctable special needs to be the same. So she said that if we wrote in our homestudy that we would accept a child with additional fingers/toes, club feet, etc. to put that in there and we would still wait the same amount of time...doesn't really make since to me. Are there just as many healthy children as children with sn? The children that they refer out weekely are severe special needs or older children. At this time I don't think we will accept any of those emails...knowing me I will say yes to all.
So far I am happy with the agency and how things are going. The only down fall I have is the gap between the old agency and the new one. Bethany bought out Shiloh and they are still coverting everything over and our office is still trying to gather information. So when we ask a question about Taiwan it usually has to go through 2-3 different people and then back to us. Usually after they have "finally" answered our question we have another that goes along with it...kind of frustrating but we will work through it. Next meeting is on Tuesday at the house...better get cleaning...lol:)
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Thanks for the update. When we adopted Amelia we put NSN in our paperwork but our social worker knew we were open to minor SN's, so maybe you could do that and if they come across one with a SN they could consult you before making a referral? I fell in love with a little girl (when we were waiting for Amelia's referral) that had an extra thumb. Her file was requested by another family, but she was stunning. The family that adopted her had a web site that I followed and once the thumb was removed she didn't have any problems at all. I also think children with SN's a lot of times aren't held back-it's all they know. I am internet friends with a woman with 2 children with cleft hands/feet and it doesn't hold them back at all. They do everything their older NSN sister does. I'm not saying you should be open to SN's, but I think your SW made it sound more negative than it needs to be (depending on the SN you choose of course).
ReplyDelete