This week was a frustrating week in Adoptionland. The amount of paperwork that needs to be submitted in the adoption process is mind-numbing. The first and probably most time-consuming set of documents that are needed is the Home Study. This set of documents that seem to ask for every imaginable nuance of who you are and includes 4 visits from a social worker took us a couple of months to complete. It is your first test to prove you are fit to be parents and more importantly muster the adoption process. Anyways, we got word over the weekend that our Home Study was set to expire in June and that our social worker was retiring so we would be assigned a new one and would need to renew our Home Study. This includes additional fees, new paperwork , new sets of fingerprints, criminal background checks, employment verification....blah, blah, blah...
If this wasn't enough instead of getting news that NOC was approved this week, we got notification from CARA that a couple of questions on our physical exam weren't answered by our doctor. These questions were missed by our doctor, our caseworker, us, and the gazillion other layers of bureaucratic checks that came before including their own. I was simply in shock when I heard this...really, REALLY? This paperwork has been with them for close to a year. We were told we needed to get the doctor to complete the form again and resubmit, notarized and apostilled...immediately. We made a scrambled attempt to get everything done and were able to do so in a little over 1 day ...they have emailed copies of the new forms and will get the originals early next week.
I just want to know where the accountability is in this whole process. The only people who get penalized for this process taking so long are the parents and the child. The emotional and financial stress is relentless. It doesn't matter if a child needs medical attention or is spending her formative years in an orphanage. You would think it would...why doesn't it? Why is there no incentive, moral or otherwise to get things done in a reasonable amount of time?
Monday is my daughter's 3rd birthday. My caseworker allowed me to send her a gift with the new paperwork being sent by Fed Ex to India. I found a cute wind-up sheep doll and a book about lambs...and I found the perfect birthday card. It has a pig with a set of birthday balloons in it's mouth that is swimming through a body of water. The message on the inside reads:
If this wasn't enough instead of getting news that NOC was approved this week, we got notification from CARA that a couple of questions on our physical exam weren't answered by our doctor. These questions were missed by our doctor, our caseworker, us, and the gazillion other layers of bureaucratic checks that came before including their own. I was simply in shock when I heard this...really, REALLY? This paperwork has been with them for close to a year. We were told we needed to get the doctor to complete the form again and resubmit, notarized and apostilled...immediately. We made a scrambled attempt to get everything done and were able to do so in a little over 1 day ...they have emailed copies of the new forms and will get the originals early next week.
I just want to know where the accountability is in this whole process. The only people who get penalized for this process taking so long are the parents and the child. The emotional and financial stress is relentless. It doesn't matter if a child needs medical attention or is spending her formative years in an orphanage. You would think it would...why doesn't it? Why is there no incentive, moral or otherwise to get things done in a reasonable amount of time?
Monday is my daughter's 3rd birthday. My caseworker allowed me to send her a gift with the new paperwork being sent by Fed Ex to India. I found a cute wind-up sheep doll and a book about lambs...and I found the perfect birthday card. It has a pig with a set of birthday balloons in it's mouth that is swimming through a body of water. The message on the inside reads:
"Ain't no river wide enough to keep me away from you, babe.
Happy Birthday!"
On a side note, I found out this week that once we receive NOC, we can take over guardianship of Anjali. We can't take her home until after the case has been through court which could be quite a while, but I could go to India and live with her there. Come June...there are some serious decisions to be made about how much longer I wait for this adoption process to take it's natural course.
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