Fostering Update

I know that I haven't updated for awhile and I am sure that many people are wondering how the process is going with fostering. We began our fostering journey last summer and then took a pause a few months later because of all the medical stuff that came up with Madeline. We had done all the fingerprints, inspections, paperwork, classes, etc. and were just waiting to see how Maddy was going to do. In March we saw that Maddy was doing well so we decided to finish the process. After a 6 month break, we obviously had a few forms and papers that had changed so we had to redo a few of those. We were told that it would take about 2-6 weeks for our paperwork to go through in Columbia. We were very fortunate that it actually only took less than 2 weeks to get approved so on July 3rd we officially went on the open bed list and were just waiting for a placement.

During that 2 1/2 weeks we didn't get a placement. Many of you were so kind to check in and ask if we had a placement yet or not.  Around that point we found out that our current organization had decided to step back from licensing fostering families but decided to focus more on adoption. We wanted to be sure that we would have support when the door opened for us to foster so we decided to move our license over to another organization. We met with their recruiting agency and then discovered that instead of being able to transfer our license we actually had to redo a few things. Many of the forms and tests we had to fill out and get run were sent directly to our previous organization so they don't actually just simply transfer to another place. We found out on Monday of last week that we had to fill out a few more forms again, get another fire inspection, get fingerprints done, redo our TB skin test and get background checks run again. We want to be good stewards and do as much as we can on our side as fast as we can so we pushed through. Last week was already so cramped with therapies for Maddy and drama camp for Emma so we added more stress by doing all of our leg work on our end :-P As of Saturday, we finished all the steps we were supposed to do so now we wait again. The file will be sent to Columbia again and then we wait until they give us our new license and then we go on the open bed list again. Our prayer is that since we just finished our license and Columbia JUST saw it less than a month ago, that it will go through quicker like last time.

We know that many of you may have been wondering what's going on so we wanted to keep you in the loop. We're still very much in the process but met a few more hiccups along the way.