Monday, August 29, 2011

It's Done!!!!

Finally our homestudy is complete!  We have it in our possession and could not be happier to have it finished.  Overall we are pleased with the content and how it is written.  We read over all of it with our practitioner and made any corrections we thought were needed.  She also gave us a copy of all of our clearances and references which is great since I did not have all of them.

As I have mentioned Nic and I are planning on looking for a new practitioner.  Today did not go very well on that front.  I called the first person on our list who came highly recommended.  She is currently not taking on any new clients and won't be until January or so.  I then took a look at the second person on our list and found out she is currently off due to a recent surgery and her next seminar is not until November which has to be completed before we can have an interview.  I did leave a message on her voicemail on the chance we might be able to see her before then.  I then called the third person on the list and have an interview scheduled with her for next week.  This is a start but one out of three is not great since we wanted some options this time around to make sure we were making the right decision. Ugh...

So we have some thinking to do.  We do not necessarily need a practitioner right at this moment since we will just be meeting with agencies and essentially getting the ball rolling.  There is a very good chance there may be a waiting list for the agencies anyway.  We can hold out until November when we can do the seminar required for the one practitioners if we have to.  We are going to sign up now to make sure we have a spot.  We can always cancel later if we need to.

I have also left a message with the lady in charge of adoption at the Picton CAS.  She had told me to give her a call when our homestudy was done.  She will want to meet with us and needs a copy of the homestudy for our file.  I am also going to give her a copy of our profile since it is done as well.  Although I have to go to Belleville first because when I had Staples print it last week they put all the back pages on the wrong way.  I wish I had noticed when I picked them up but I didn't.

It is nice to be doing something productive again.  I will try to keep the blog updated so you know what we are working on.

:)

Thursday, August 25, 2011

The Homestudy Process is Finally Nearing an End

It has been forever since I posted because we have just been waiting for our practitioner to put together a rough draft of our homestudy.  The last two and a half months have been very frustrated.  She has given us a number of time frames and deadlines and not met any of them.  This past week I finally got The Ministry of Child and Youth Services involved (they regulate practitioners, who are essentially self employed).  The two people I dealt with at The Ministry were wonderful and stepped in to help get our homestudy complete.  We have a meeting set for this Sunday afternoon with our practitioner to review our rough draft.  If there are not too many changes she will make them on the spot and we will leave there with our completed homestudy in hand. 

I am trying not to get too excited because I know it may very well be next week before it is done but I am excited to at least look at it on Sunday.  This process has taken far longer than we expected.  Our practitioner received the last piece of information she needed from our PRIDE trainer on May 30th and we expected to have everything finished up shortly after that.  I feel a bit like we have wasted the last few months but work has kept us on the go so maybe it is a good thing.

Once our homestudy is complete our first order of business will be to hire a new practitioner.  I could go into all the trouble we have had with the current woman but really what it comes down to is that we do not trust her.  Both Nic and I feel we need someone who will support us, look out for our best interests and is trustworthy.  This woman does not fit the bill.  We have four potential practitioners that we are going to have consults with.  We do not want to make the same mistake twice so are going to see a number of people and pick who we like best.  They are located everywhere from Bath to Pickering so we will be doing some travelling but there is not much we can do about that.  Hopefully we will find someone great and get this adoption process rolling.

Once we hire a new practitioner we can get our profile up online and start to meet with adoption agencies. We also have a name of a Toronto abortion clinic that we want to contact and we may put an ad in a newspaper way up North that has an adoption section.  We are also going to meet with the Picton CAS and make sure they have our homestudy on file.  So there will be lots to do once we hire a practitioner. 

It will be so nice to start doing something productive again.  All this waiting has taken its toll on me.  Nic has been a wonderful support and our relationship is stronger than ever.  We have managed to take some time away from work this summer and have done lots of camping, boating and visiting with friends.  I feel like we have not been home all summer but it has been a wonderful change from our usual summer chained to the office or job site.

We both still feel confident that adoption is the right choice for us.  You do re-think it when you feel like everywhere you turn you hit another road block.  It may be a bit of a cliche but I do feel "whatever does not kill you makes you stronger".   We have a strong foundation as a couple. These first 6 months of the adoption process have just added a few more layers of cement to that foundation.  We are both excited and looking forward to beginning the next stage of the process.