I so relate to this blog. I attempted to adopt from foster care and never got a placement. I was told by my social worker.... it was partly because I wasn't open to adopting siblings.

I am a single woman and only wanted to adopt one child at a time.

AngelaW
The ones that you love the most are usually the ones that hurt you the most. - Unknown

There a couple of things you can do. First, request a copy of your homestudy. Some agencies and workers will accept it directly from you, you can fax it or overnight it. When you send it yourself, be sure to include a few family photos, it makes your study stand out among the crowd. Second, request that your worker send a copy of your homestudy to the Adopt America Network. AAN can send your homestudy for you much faster than your worker will sometimes for available foster children and agencies will accept it from them. My friend Lisa is a rep through there if you want to put it to her attention. I have adopted 6 children from foster care, my friend Lisa has gotten twins from Oregon, a 4 yo and recently a 1 yo from Texas, a 10 year old from Detroit, a NB with DS from Tn all using AAN. Guess I'll write a blog on this, Good luck and feel free to email me privately if you want specific info..Julia

I heartily agree with the advice to contact AAN. They really got things moving for us when we had been waiting for years.

This is another factor impeding adoption. Not uncommon either. Years ago, there was no FAX, or internet, it was US mail and everything had to be typed using a typewriter. Same case loads, same degree of damage in the kids, but they got placed, and, the workers didn't complain about how rough they had it. A fair chunk of modern workers have the entitlement mentality, they have it rough! (Translated that means they will not do some things that are needed to protect themselves from overwork.)

I was being matched with an 11 yo boy, his worker just wasn't doing anything. Finally, I called and asked when she was going to make Michael her priority, so he could be placed. That ticked her off, she let me know she had 25 kids on her caseload and Michael would always get what time she had left over, she was overloaded. 25 kids is the lightest load I have heard of in years, yet the poor me was full bore.

Her solution was to dump me. Michael is still on the same listings, still with the two year old picture and writeup, he isn't going to get out of the system. Needs to be sentenced to work at McDonalds for two years, so she can appreciate the need to be task oriented. Odd that they get an MSW degree when they are so good at BS.

Hang in there. I was matched with three boys, none happened due to worker problems on the child's end. Number four was the charm, and we have been together three months.

Thanks to Lisa for letting me guest blog here and thanks to everyone else for their advice and understanding. I contacted AAN today for their registration packet so hopefully we'll get set up soon. I do have my home study and a family flyer with our photo that we've been sending out to whomever we can find contact info for. I'm hoping that being matched to a child will be just a matter of getting our home study into the right hands. I'll try to keep you all updated and thanks again for your support.

We have been waiting for a placement for 6 months, without even 1 call. It's so frustrating, especially since the main reason for adoption through foster care, is the thought that they needed us. I would love to get in touch with NAA, I didn't even know that existed. We are currently licensed through a private agency, which is supposed to be better than going straight through CPS, but I am not buying it. I think there's a large factor of "who knows who" when it comes to placement. Of course, anytime I try to ask someone about that, they straight out deny it.

Since' I posted the original thread on my blog we have heeded the advice we found here and began to work with AAN. They've been great so far and we've been receiving many emails from them about available children. Most have not been children that fit our criteria since we are searching for the impossible to find medcially healthy child 8 or younger, but just the fact that emails are coming to us instead of me spending hours each day searching is an improvement. Now if we could only get social workers to respond.....

The emotional roller coaster I'm on makes it really hard to keep myself in check sometimes and to stay focused on the fact that this is not about me...but about helping a child that needs our family. We are five months into searching (since homestudy was approved) and have inquired on nearly 100 children without hearing back on any of them so I can relate to Jefe's feelings of frustrations. My agency (also private but funded by our state for foster adoptions) held a conference on Tuesday for families in the search and I left feeling a little better, comforted by the fact that everyone else is expereincing the same long waits, and frustrations and it's not just us being rejected. Workers commented that families are often not hearing anything for five or six months and then they'll get a random call about a kid they've long ago assumed had been placed already. She said most states have been hit hard with cut backs from the recession and social workers are even more over loaded than before which is slowing down selection boards for many waiting children. Also, even when children can be matched to families in other states, often funds are not available to pay the purchase of service to  move that child so things are just shoved to the back burner.

Our family is now facing a big decision about our next step. We have been very against fostering because we wanted to protect our hearts and especially the heart of our 3 year old daughter. However, we are a military family and we do not have the luxuary of time to just sit around hoping to be matched. We will be moving out of state on new orders at the end of 2010 which sounds like a long time away...but when you consider all the post placements and legal things that need to be resolved after a child is placed with us..is not very long at all. We fear that a match will not happen and all of our long hours of training and home study visits in this state will be wasted when we are restationed. So...nervously our thoughts are turning toward the idea of fostering a child and hoping that an adoption results from it before we move. If nothing else..at the end of the day we will have helped a child in their time of need, and gained experience parenting "troubled" kids that might helps us secure a placement in the future. It seems so bizzarre to think of these terms when it comes to building our family, but for now this is our reality. A decision must be made.

For anyone else who is in this crazy search, please email me directly and I will share with you all the ways I've gotten myself plugged into various networks so far. It would be great to have other families who are in the same boat to network with for support.