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Anatomy of an adoption

September 21, 2004 in Educational, Personal by Ben | 1 comment

I sometimes make posts talking about the upcoming adoption of our little girl, or past adoptions (if you’re having trouble keeping count, we’ve adopted two and are now in the midst of our third)

To keep it straight, here is an example of some of the steps we (usually) go through:

  • Foster placement (we are foster parents, after all).
  • Time spent with child in care, while mom and/or dad try and get permission to have child returned. This is usually how a case turns out. In our state they are supposed to resolve a case within a year, but this and usually is extended another six months. If they do NOT go back home or to another relative we go to…
  • Termination of Parental Rights (or termination, for short). This happened last month for our little girl. This happens in court and the parents have the option of a jury trial and are given legal representation if they can’t afford their own. This can drag on and on or it can go quickly, depending on many factors.
  • Adoption staffing: where agency workers sit down and look at the adoption file, asign the case to an adoption worker (instead of a foster care worker where it had been), choose a family for the child, and other things. In most cases the family is already chosen (it was in the case of our little girl, but that was an exception). Often if the foster family that has cared for the child wants to adopt they get the green light but not always. In our case this happened this week, so this is where we are at as of today.
  • Adoption worker updates files. The case files are de-identified (all references to names or specific addresses/phone numbers are removed from the case files. This can take a while. When we adopted our second son, the stack of paper was eight inches thick!) Our home study is updated (workers visit the home to make sure it is OK, check that all animals are vacinated, health dept and fire dept says OK, they interview family members, etc.) An Adoption Readiness Study is done for the child (where they identify any behavioral or medical problems, habits, favorites, etc.) In our case the ARS is redundant since we know much more about the child than the agency, but if she were going somewhere else this would be important and we would be a biig part of getting this done.
    This is the process ahead of us and is why I say if we’re lucky it’ll be done by Thanksgiving (that’s only two months) or Christmas (three months). It has taken as little as two months and as much as five to get all of these steps done with our other children.
  • Child needs a physical and dental visit, probably a psychological evaluation (depending on their age and needs). My first didn’t need a pysch since he was under 18 months, my second did (and also had ECI program for about a year to work on speech development), we’ll see if we get our little girl past the Paperwork Monster before she turns 18 months (December)
  • Parents get a physical to make sure we can handle it.
  • Parents hire a lawyer to handle the paperwork and represent them on the Big Day in Court. Everything is pretty standard (thanks to word processing) and the lawyer can do everything in just a few hours. This includes filing for a new birth certificate, etc.
  • When all is in order, the state adoption case is sent to our attorney, he sets up a court date with the county family court. Our lawyer must be there in court, so coordination is the key. At this point everything should be finished.
  • The big day! We get to go to court, the judge reads the petition, we promise to love, honor, and cherish forever, and just like that, it’s all over. Then we eat.

Not much to it, is there?

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My wife can make me cry at work

September 21, 2004 in Kids, Personal by Ben

Closing line from an e-mail:

ly
congrats, future adoptive dad

Looks like we’re on the fast track, with super luck it’ll be done by thanksgiving, marginal luck Christmas, my luck? Sometime in January.

Lookee here

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…and it makes me wonder

September 21, 2004 in Personal by Ben

I was in church a few weeks ago, and at the end of mass a young lady came to the podium and wanted to talk to everyone about a group that helped her. She told her story of being a wild kid, and said that she was pregnant at 17, then again at 19. Now, however, thanks to the group, at 22 she was married to the father of her children and couldn’t be happier. What angels they were! They really helped me overcome lots of obstacles. Please help if you can.

I looked into the eyes of the baby I was holding. Her mom went to prison for fraud, and left her at the age of two months with her girlfriend, an alcoholic crack addict who was also a prostitute. Luckily a local businessman realized what happened and called the authorities. They found the baby living in a trashed apartment, and her “guardian” replied to queries about her drinking with “only when I can.” There was no formula in the house, and she had no job.

Would this group of angels had helped? Or does the church have such a problem with promiscuity, drug use, prostitution, and homosexuality that they would have just turned their back on her?

I wonder.

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Life, Unscripted.

September 9, 2004 in Kids, Personal by Ben


The Zero Boss: Blogging for Books (Guest Author: Mark Falanga)

Update: I won 3rd Place! I am shocked as at least 53 other entries were better than mine. But I’ll take it! Thanks everyone for the kind thoughts and e-mails and comments. And thanks to Jay and Mark for making this possible. I’ve found writing about things to be a very interesting way to unlock feelings I thought were lost.

This is my story:

The answering machine said “4.” Four messages. Nobody ever calls, how did that happen? Must have been a wrong number. Fearing a family member was sick, or worse, I was about to press ‘play’ when the phone rang.

“Hi, this is Dee. We have a placement and wanted to talk with you about it. It’s a little boy, three months old, and he needs somewhere to go tonite.”


- Read the rest ->

I suppose I’d better back up a little. The year before, my wife and I went through the certification process to become foster parents. We went to class, we were interviewed, fingerprinted, inspected, detected. All was in order, but up to now we had never been called on. Up to now.

“I tried to call you at work, but you had already left, and I left some messages on your machine at home.”

As part of our preparation, in our many interviews, we had to specify what kind of children we thought we could care for best. Since we both work, we thought school age children would do best in our home. We had no kids of our own, but felt we made damn fine babysitters. We had set up a room for them already, two twin beds (my wife sewed matching quilts along with a friend). We had a few kid toys – legos, lincoln logs.

“How old did you say he was?”

“He’s three months. He was removed from his home, and he needs a place tonite. It’s getting late. He seems to be happy and healthy.”

I looked at my watch, it was almost 6:30. My wife would be home from work soon. What would she think?

“Umm…,” I tried to think on my feet. “Do you know anything about the case?”

“Well, they have a family member, the fathers sister, I think, and they want to take him but we have to do a background check first. He’d probably be with you for a week.”

Well, that changed everything. It was almost Spring Break, my wife was a graduate student and would have the week off. We could do this. And just as I was thinking that, my wife walked in the front door.

“Can I call you right back? We need to talk for a minute.”

Dee said fine and gave me a number to reach her. It only took a moment for us to agree – sure! It’d be fun. We could get our first taste of fostering and it would be conveniently at a time where she didn’t have to work.

We called, said we’d be happy to do it. “Okay, we’ll be there in a couple of hours.”

I hung up the phone. Shit! What had I just said? We had to think fast.

My wife called some friends. They were expecting, but not for about four months. They cheerfully offered their crib for the week and said they could bring it over right away. Turns out they also brought some baby clothes and toys, too.

By 9:00 the doorbell rang, and moments later I was holding a tiny baby in my arms. He looked me in the eye, drew a breath, and screamed.

“Look, he likes you! Sign here…” said the worker. They had stopped at Wal-Mart on their way to the house, so the little guy had a change of clothes, some diapers, a pacifier, and some formula. They loaned us a car seat (“we’ll need this back, but you can keep it for now.”) We had just finished building the crib, after moving our computer desk and some boxes (still packed from our move two years before) around in our office.

A few minutes later, we were alone with the baby. He calmed down as soon as my wife held him, and after all the adventures he had during the day, was soon asleep. We laid him in the crib. (“Is it ‘back to sleep’?”) and started planning our next few days. At that moment, we had no idea how flexible we had to be.

The next day, my bride brought him to my work. As soon as he spotted me he laughed and smiled – which was, of course, much better than the night before. Perhaps it’s because I was up three times overnight feeding or changing him. I’ll never know. That weekend we drove to my parents house, and to see friends. Showing him off, like a new car or an engagement ring.

By the middle of the following week it was clear he was not going to live with his aunt. “Well, that didn’t work out, but there are other relatives that might be interested. But it looks like he’ll be with you for a while, maybe another couple weeks.”

Panic, again. E had to be back at school the following Monday, so we needed to find a sitter. The very first person she interviewed was perfect for the job. “We don’t know how long he’ll be with us” “That’s okay, he’s welcome here. You don’t need a long term contract or anything.” A relative mailed us a care package, boys clothes their son had outgrown. We found another car seat, so we’d have one in each car.

Over the coming weeks, and months, relative after relative didn’t work out. His mom left town – left the state. His dad had remarried and his new wife didn’t want anything to do with the baby.

Two months before his second birthday, we adopted him. And two weeks ago he began 1st Grade. We finally had our “school age” child.


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