I’m not gonna lie, this past week has been
pretty awful. We had two full days of review rotations for the OAA’s and a
whole day of testing. My patience is thin.
We got our first round of bad news on Tuesday
with a promise of a follow up the next day. Fast forward to today when I still
hadn’t heard back and emailed them to check in. I got a call around 4:10pm
today. I’d like to say they had great news, but it wasn’t. After sitting in
tears in my classroom listening to the administrative assistant for 25 minutes,
I tried to find something positive out of the conversation- but there just
isn’t anything.
Our 36 hours of training we did when we first
got out Foster Care license expired, had this error been found sooner it
wouldn’t have been an issue- but because it has been so long they basically no
longer exist. We have to start all over.
The 12 hours of training we have done that we
thought was going towards our renewal, doesn’t count for anything (the really
bad part of this is that I used my personal time to attend the training and
missed parent teacher conferences- FOR NOTHING!)
We have to take 12 hours of training to get a
new Foster Care license for Infant Adoption only, however since our agency
finally capped at 40 families- they are no longer offering this training. So we
are on our own to find the 12 hours of training in certain areas that we need
to meet this requirement. We can take the 36 hour course again through
Children's Services if we’d like or we can try to contact another private
adoption agency and pay for the training (approximately $1500). If we take the
class through Children's Services, we can't take it until August (during back
to school time... 2 nights a week for 6 weeks).
We have until August 27th to figure this out and
obtain the 12 hours of training and pay a $900 fee to fix the homestudy.
Otherwise, we have to pay a $450 fee to renew our old study and then pay the
$900 whenever we can get the hours completed. On top of that we have to
pay to take CPR and First Aid Training, pay someone to come out and inspect our
furnace, get the Fire Department to come and do another fire inspection, and be
re-questioned to complete another homestudy and have assessor visits.
I would have to say the worst part of the
entire conversation was when she told us we could just leave everything how it
is. If we did that then the baby would “just go into cradle (foster) care for
the first 40 or so days. Then you can them home. It goes by fast, it’s a good
option in this case. It’s not a huge deal”. This may be extremely rude, but do
you know what my response was? It went something like this…
Me- “Let me stop you right there, have you had
a child in Foster Care?”
Girl- “Well no, but-”
Me (cutting her off) “Then I don’t think you
can tell me that it’s not a big deal or that it goes by fast.”
Girl- "Well, that's what it seems like
the families have thought-"
Me- "I highly doubt any family thought
not having their baby for over a month went by fast or that it wasn't a big
deal. I think they would be devastated."
At this point, I’m sobbing and done and
couldn’t get off the phone fast enough. There have been many an occasion that I
have thought “Man, it would be great to have a worker who actually understands
this side of the situation or that has gone through this” and this was
definitely one of those times. It makes me want to go back to school. Anyway,
I’ve said it before, but I don’t think people understand that this is our
future child. It’s not a toy or a dog. It is OUR CHILD. Would you voluntarily
put your child in Foster Care?? I can’t even imagine.
Anyway, that is the update- my personal
devastation. My horrible, depressing, angry, tearful, probably rude,
heartbreaking, and irate feelings. So I’m asking for prayers. Lots and lots and
lots of prayers because I don’t know what else to do at this point. I am
putting all of my faith into the thought that God has a plan that I just cannot
see right now.
P.S. And I ask this, if you’ve seen me this
week and I was short or bad tempered or rude to you. I’m sorry. If over the
next few weeks, you see me act like this- I’m sorry. From the bottom of my
heart I am trying to not let this take over my life and I am trying to be
positive, but I’m completely overwhelmed and feel like I’m swimming upstream.
