Pins and needles

I swear, just when you think you are on the home stretch, with the finish line in sight.

So Tuesday, Russia issued a list of homestudy agencies that are now banned because they have outstanding post-placement reports. You guessed it, our homestudy agency is on that list. We have a homestudy agency and a placement agency. The social worker thinks they are on the banned list because of a family that got non-compliant and uncooperative about their post-placement reports after they moved away. We all sign documents promising post-placement reports before we adopt. We sign, the agencies sign...our social worker will do follow-up visits 6, 12, 24, and 36 months after our child comes home and those reports are a pretty big deal to the Russians (and the Chinese, although I think they are a bigger deal to the Russians). If you are adopting or have adopted internationally and you have not complied with this, please leave your name and address in the comment section so I come to your house and personally give you a piece of my mind.

I'm in contact with our placement agency about it, and they are scrambling to find out how this will affect us. I'm concerned, but calm, and we are better off than most families I've seen discussing this on the boards. The social worker who did our homestudy is apparently affiliated with more than one agency, and she has made arrangements to switch us to another agency with her remaining as our social worker. At least, that is how I understand it today. This has all happened in the last 48 hours or so.

It will only cost us about $150 because she will not charge us the full cost of another homestudy and because Texas will not charge us for more apostilles since we have met our dollar limit. Some folks are being told they have to go to another homestudy agency and start the homestudy process and paperwork over again, and since that can cost thousands, they may not be able to do it and even if they can afford it, it puts another delay in the journey.

Our original homestudy is sitting in Russia...we are in the process of registering with a specific region which is necessary so that we can receive one of the referrals that are expected soon from that region. I am hoping that we can just provide the new paperwork (there is a lot of paperwork provided by the homestudy agency...not just the homestudy itself) before court. I'm hoping they will let us register with our current paperwork. If not, and if it isn't too late to register for this batch of referrals, I see another trip to Austin in my near future. If we can wait until court, I'll have time to mail the apostille requests.

And my heart goes out to all those families who are struggling with how to deal with this. There are a lot of agencies on the list. Probably 200 agencies. Some agencies will be able to file the missing reports and hopefully get off the list, but many families will be sent into a tailspin by all this. It's heartbreaking.