June 3, 2015: Dede showed up around 3:00 to watch Matthew. Andrew and I made the VERY long drive to Buckner for the first time. We pulled in and we were instantly impressed. It looked like a quaint college campus. Red brick buildings sprawled out on the property, lots of big trees at the entrance. I don't know what we expected, but this definitely wasn't it. It far exceeded what we were picturing.
We followed the instructions in the email and pulled up to the education center. I felt very jittery walking in, I was excited and anxious.
The lobby was grey. Many different shades of grey, but done in a way that was surprisingly warm and cozy. We signed in with a sweet receptionist who immediately informed us that Kristin, our adoption specialist, was stuck in traffic on her way from a meeting at their corporate office. We had just been in said traffic and understood. We didn't end up waiting for very long, but a bunch of people passed by us in that time: every single one of them stopped to say hello, ask if we needed water, and if we had been helped. Even the security guard. We felt extremely welcomed and at ease, they could not have made a better first impression on us. I was fascinated by the really old photos on the walls of the building from decades ago and of early groups of children they helped. The building was very fascinating, I would love to go back for some sort of tour.
Kristin arrived and we loved her instantly. We went to her office and began what ended up being an hour and a half long interview. She wanted to know all about us, our family dynamic at home, what we were looking for, if we had any questions or concerns, why we were wanting to adopt, and then explained in a lot of detail what would be happening in the coming year. It was a LOT of information so I will do my best to recount what she said accurately:
For any number of reasons, a child or children are removed from their home and placed with a foster family. There is then an 18-month period of trying to reconnect them with any suitable and willing biological family members. Once the 18 months is over, they have (I think) 90 days to fight the court's decision to terminate the rights. At that point, the state looks at the foster family to see if they want to move forward with adopting them. If not, that's where waiting families like us will come in. CPS will send out feelers to the agencies across the state with the children's file, history, all known information on behaviors and things like that. They will ask for either all suitable matches from the agencies or a top few choices to be reviewed. If we get picked, CPS gets our file from Buckner for review. They will send all files to be given to us and a list of questions. We would meet with Kristin to give our answers and discuss the situation. 24 hours later we must say if we want to commit to moving forward with these children or pass. If we agree to move forward, a meeting is arranged with the CPS case worker, Buckner, and us. If at the end of that meeting we are all on the same page, then we would start the process of meeting with the foster family and the children. This would likely be the first time we got to see what the children looked like, pictures aren't always with every file. After a series of meetings and such, and once we for sure want to keep moving forward, the children will move in with us. There is a six month trial period, if you will, before we can finalize the adoption.
But before any of that can begin, we have a slew of trainings and seminars to attend, all between now and mid-July. It will be a very overwhelming month for us. Not only do we have to put in this huge time commitment to a place that is 50 miles away, I am likely starting a new position at my work in August, with a month-long training starting first week of July. Andrew has two trips planned for work before the end of this month. And we only have some of the dates covered with a sitter for Matthew, with ZERO bites for the other days.
So we left Buckner that afternoon, our brain overloaded with dates and information and our hands full of paperwork and a required reading list. And we were excited. Because all of the craziness that's about to take place brings us that much closer to our children, who are out there somewhere. Hopefully safe and well, just waiting for us. We agreed that doing this round of classes, rather than waiting until September, makes the most sense. Otherwise our kids will be waiting that much longer for us to get to them, and we don't want to waste a second.
Our first training class is all day this coming Saturday, and we are anxious to dive into these classes! After they are done, we get to move onto the home study, and then we wait for the phone call that we are matched with our kids.
It's a long, busy road ahead...but we are ready!
