The Sedberry Foster Family Home

Jen and I are officially home study approved and licensed by the state of California to be foster parents! Enter applause here. As with any bureaucracy, there is a story behind it.

As you know, we had our walk-through by the state on Saturday, June 13th. When the social worker left, he told us that everything looked good and that he would file the paperwork on Monday, once he received the pictures of the crib that we had to buy. After the paperwork was filed, we would receive our license in the mail in two weeks. Jen and I were ecstatic.

Two weeks came and went. Since the license was coming via snail-mail, I gave it the benefit of the doubt and waited a few more days. When nearly three weeks had passed, I called the social worker. He seemed surprised that we hadn’t received it yet. Call back if it hasn’t arrived in the next week or so, he told me.

We waited. Another week passed, with nothing. I called the social worker back. I listened as he looked up our license on his computer. He read off that we had been licensed by the state since June 18th. I glanced at the calendar: July 13th. It had been a full month since our walk-through! Our county social worker was waiting on this one last document before we were officially put into the recruitment center’s computers to find a match. Now nearly a month had been wasted. The state social worker told me that he would “have them regenerate a copy and send it to us”.

I called Jen at work and relayed the message. Jen was not happy with this vague outcome. So she took matters into her own hands. She is a bit of a Google wiz, and somehow found the number for the head office of Social Services Licensing in Sacramento, and got a hold of a director there. She was completely mystified by this: “How on Earth did you get this number?” It was a good thing that Jen found that number, though. Turns out that the state social worker was responsible for sending us the copy of our license! He had been sitting on it for all this time, doing nothing, assuming that we would just magically get our copy! The director was not happy. She called him and had him not only mail us our license, but fax a copy to us ASAP.

Coincidently, our county social worker called Jen the same day to congratulate us on being licensed. The county had received a copy of our license before we did!

On July 16th, two days shy of being licensed a month, we received the mailed copy of our foster license. It is proudly posted on our wall next to our telephone, naming us the “Sedberry Foster Family Home”. We also received a congratulations letter from the county, telling us that we are officially in the recruitment system, and can now literally be called any minute!