dss update-august

a few people have been asking and it's been a while since i posted an update on our progress for dss foster care certification. we essentially did the last thing we needed to do about 1 1/2 weeks ago (on july 29). we had to have a "home assessment" which was different than all the other home meetings, inspections, etc etc that we have had thus far. dss contracts with an outside organization to come into our home and meet with us for about 1 1/2 - 2 hours. the woman who conducted our assessment was very nice. she asked a ton of questions about our upbringings, our policy on disciplining children, our families, and so forth and so on. she also took a quick glance at the baby's room to make sure that everything was in place. that all went pretty well.

during that meeting we asked the woman how long we were from the end of this seemingly never-ending process. she said that she had to type up the report and give it to her supervisor. her supervisor would approve it (or not) and then send it to our dss caseworker. the caseworker would approve it (or not) and send it to the state office for foster care licensing. they would approve it (or not) and then send it back to the dss caseworker. then the caseworker would issue us our certification. that, apparently takes about a month. hrumph.

i coincidentally ran into the supervisor of the woman who conducted our home assessment at a social work function this past friday. i introduced myself and she told me that the home assessment woman spoke very highly of us. that was nice. but the supervisor said that she had not yet received the written report of the assessment. i asked the supervisor if, in her opinion, this part of the process would take 1 month and she said yes, at the very least. she went on to say that the state office has lost a lot of employees to cutbacks so they're processing paperwork very slow these days. surprise surprise.

so, the long-and-the-short of it is that we've completed everything we can (or at least i assume we have. we keep getting calls and emails from our caseworker asking us to sign some new form or another.) and we're just waiting to get our certification. at that point we will be "open for business!"