Friday, October 24, 2014

Home study update

I haven't posted much about our new adoption process because I'm really struggling with it on an emotional level. I'm having a hard time letting my heart get invested because I am so afraid that this one will fail as well. We have no reason to expect it to fail. St. Lucy's (the agency in Taiwan) knows about us already and seems interested in our family. Jenny still wants a family. But I expected the last adoption to succeed and my heart was broken when it didn't. At some point in the process, probably when we receive pre-approval, I will get excited. Until then, I'm just following my husband's lead, praying, and filling out paperwork.

We've had a lot of progress this week.

Thursday - Both of us were fingerprinted. I received my results back while hubby was still being fingerprinted! Unfortunately, it looks like his fingerprints didn't "take" and he will probably have to redo them. We also notarized our financial statement for the home study and dossier.

Sunday - We have a visit with our social worker. She's coming over for a short visit (around an hour) to get an update on our family.

Monday - We have appointments to start the medical clearance. We received permission to use our naturopath this time! Last time, the Taiwan agency (a different one) told us that our naturopath couldn't sign our clearance because she's an ND instead of an MD. But St. Lucy's gave us the ok to visit our naturopath, since she's our primary care doc. Hurray!

Once hubby's fingerprints get sorted out and we get the medical clearances completed, we'll just be waiting for our social worker to update our home study. She's only charging us $250 to get our home study updated and new copies printed! Such a blessing!

We also found out that our paperwork is on its way back from Taiwan and that the translation was included. We were afraid we would not be allowed to have the translation, even though I insisted they return it to us since we paid to have all of our paperwork translated. This is such a relief. Once the paperwork is here, we can scan a copy of our old home study with translation and email it to St. Lucy's. They will use the old home study to review us for pre-approval since it will save a bunch of time and money. Eventually, when we get the new home study, it will be translated and inserted into the dossier for use in court.

Our new agency told us that the approvals process will likely take 1-2 months starting from the time they receive our home study. So we are hoping to be formally matched with Jenny by the end of the year.

If anyone wants to chat about agencies, I'd be happy to share our experiences. Our old agency was Wasatch (in Utah), who works with Chung Yi in Taiwan. Our new agency is Heartsent (in CA), who works with St. Lucy's. And we have a fabulous social worker here in the Seattle area! If you live in this area, I'd recommend her in a heartbeat.

3 comments:

Jason and Michelle said...

You and your family will continue to be in our prayers. Im glad you get the home study with the translation back.

Anonymous said...

From time to time, people ask us if the process is difficult. I usually reply that I went through less in the way of background checks, fingerprints, etc. to get a low-level security clearance. It is NOT a process for the unmotivated.

Praying for you.

Michelle said...

This sounds promising!

Praying the process moves along smoothly and speedily.