Post-workshop Update 3/2/10

The weekend intensive workshop was great! There were 5 couples there, including us, and one single. Two were from Ohio, one from Maryland, one from Connecticut, one from New York and us. We were the only ones with foster experience and were the only ones who had tried to adopt before. We were given several books to read as well as a ton of information in our notebook. We had a few forms to fill out that we took care of while we were there, as well as handing over our first payment. And they sent us home with a "to-do" list, including:

1. Read 2 of the books we were given.
2. Complete a cultural assessment questionaire.
3. Work on the text for our Dear Birthmother letter. We emailed them a draft of 80% of the content before we left. We're waiting to hear their feedback. They say most letters go through 6 re-writes before they are accepted.
4. Gather pictures for our Dear Birthmother letter. We had gathered several that we could potentialy use in our letter. We have to have one taken for the cover that has some specific requirements. It should be taken outdoors with no shadows or squinting, we should look like we like each other (be close), it should look like we are within arms reach of the camera (mostly a head/shoulders shot), we should coordinate the color of our clothes (and tie that to the colors we use in the letter when it is designed), and there shouldn't be anything distracting in the background.
5. By the time we get those things done, they should have a template out for the letter and for our adoption website at www.iheartadoption.org. Previously prospective adoptive parents had to use professional designers to put together their letter, which is really more of a 4 page pamphlet or brochure.
6. When we are done and the leter is approved, we have to have 250 printed and send about 100 to IAC. They give them to birth mothers that have requested information. She can request all of the letters (about 250 prospective adoptive families), but they try to get her to narrow the field by specifying letters a specific geographical area, religious preference, straight/gay/lesbian preference, etc. She can also do her own searching on the website and request information on only a few that way.
7. We have to have our home study updated, since it is 2 years old now. That means new employment verifications, fingerprints for background checks, child abuse registery checks, physicals, financial information, and a multi-page demographic/background questionaire. And 6 reference letters, 2 from relatives and 4 from friends. Oh joy! When all of that is done, our local adoption agency will write up the home study and submit it to IAC.
8. Once the homestudy, the Dear Birthmother letter, and the website are done, we will be officially "listed" with IAC and birthmothers can find us. Then the waiting begins. They say it takes 6-18 months to be selected by a birth mother. She can be anywhere from 5 months along to ready to hatch. She can be anywhere in the US. If she is in a state with an IAC office (Indiana, California, Texas, Georgia, or North Carolina), they will handle all the local adoption stuff. If she's anywhere else, we'll have a third (local) adoption agency that we'll have to work through to handle the birth state paperwork. Oh...and we can't adopt from Flordia, Mississippi, Arkansas, or Utah. It's against the law for gays to adopt there. And IAC doesn't work with Kentucky birth mothers because Kentucky has some really strange, time-consuming rules about adoption that make it too difficult.

Even with all these things that need to happen, we are hopeful that we can be "listed" with IAC within a month or so. Looking at the whole process, from signing up to finalization of the adoption, it is very clear that many things need to happen that are totally out of our control! So we put the whole process in God's hands and trust that we will be successful.