First Meeting with the Social Worker

I finally decided to use CASI Foundation for Children to do my homestudy. After calling EVERY SINGLE agency on the list WACAP gave me, talking with tons of people about the costs and services included, I decided they were all pretty close in terms of cost so I couldn't really decide on that basis. I was most impressed by the woman who answered the phone at CASI, because she didn't just refer me to their web site (which one group did). With each group, I started off explaining that I was at the stage where I was too dumb to know what questions to ask yet. Most of the groups simply took my name and address and offered to send me a packet in the mail. (My mailman was really hating me there for a while, trying to jam all these over-sized packets into my little mailbox!) The woman at CASI just loved her role of educating the public and spent 20 minutes explaining the whole process and advising me what parts to get done early on. I decided that someone else in that agency had to be smart, too, since they were sharp enough to hire her to make such a good first impression, so they got my vote. I turned in an application and got assigned to a social worker.

The first meeting with the social worker was actually scheduled for last week, but it got canceled because of an ice storm. So last night was the first meeting. She met me together with another couple that was having their first meeting, too, since we all needed the exact same paperwork.
Paperwork. Now I finally understand why the word "work" is included. I walked out of that meeting with more paperwork than I have ever had to fill out in my life. And it's complicated stuff, because most of it needs to be notarized, half of it needs to be sent somewhere else after it is notarized, half of it will generate inspections of various sorts, and some of it gets sent back to her from the places I send it (so I'll never know if it's back in a timely manner or not). And the kicker is, ALL of this must be completed before I get to see her again. She can't start the interview/meeting phase of the homestudy until every last bit of this paperwork is done. Now I'm starting to feel a little overwhelmed!

But I felt good about my contact with the social worker. I like her style, and her viewpoint on the homestudy is that it needn't be a bug-under-the-microscope experience so much as a learning experience both for her and for the prospective adoptive parent. She's willing to work with the few issues that I was afraid would stand in the way of me being able to adopt. I really like her can-do attitude. So, off I go to get paperwork done. Will write again when I get out from under this mountain!