Matched

First of all, I’ve noticed that we missed writing about something. We are part of a program through UCLA Medical Center called Ties for Families. We went through nine hours of training between July 20th and August 3rd to be part of the program. What is Ties for Families? I’ll let them tell you themselves:

“TIES for Families is an interdisciplinary, university-based program established in 1995 to promote the successful adoption, growth, and development of children with special needs, especially those with prenatal substance exposure who are in foster care. The program is located on the UCLA campus and works in close collaboration with the public child welfare and mental health systems. The program employs an innovative model of intervention to reduce barriers to the adoption of these children and support their successful transition into permanent homes with stable, nurturing families.
Services are available free of charge to adoptive families of children who are placed and referred by the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services. TIES offers an innovative intervention model involving a nine hour program of preparation for adoptive parents, assessment of individual children’s development, and pre-placement consultation with prospective adoptive parents by a multi-disciplinary team regarding the child’s mental health, medical, and educational needs. There is a comprehensive array of intervention services available to children and families, including adoption counseling for new families in transition, individual and family therapy, home-visiting, psychological testing, monthly parental and child support groups, short-term weekly therapy groups for children and teens, parenting skills training, infant mental health, and new parent peer mentoring.
TIES for Families provides training at the local, state, and national level on the adoption of children with special needs and on the lessons learned from this innovative model of intervention. Training is offered to prospective and current adoptive parents, child social workers in public welfare, and professionals in the legal and mental health systems. Longitudinal research is being conducted on the effectiveness of the project and the developmental outcome of the children and their families” UCLA Ties for Families www.tiesforadoption.ucla.edu

Since being officially licensed in June, Jen and I have been called about four different matches. The county has not wasted any time in trying to get us placed!

As was written about in the post before this, the first match was August 13th. We were called about two brothers, ages one and three. Being our very first call, we were obviously ecstatic. Unfortunately, a few days later, we were informed that the birth mother had named two family members that she wanted the children to be placed with. Jen and I were crushed.

That same day we were offered a 4-year-old little boy, but he was attached to a 16-year-old brother, who did not want to be adopted. We are only twenty-three, making only a seven year difference in ages between us and the brother. We decided that that match just wasn’t for us.

About two weeks later we received our next match call. We were offered a 6-year-old boy. We decided against this match because our age range for what we want to adopt is between birth and six years. If we were to be placed with a 6-year-old, we would like it to be the oldest of a sibling group. We ultimately decided that this too would not be a good match for us.

On September 14th, we were called about a little 3-year-old boy. Based on what little background our social worker was able to give us, we decided to pursue this placement! Now we are learning how this process works.

First, after we accepted the match, our social worker had to meet with his adoptions social worker to compare notes and decide if this is a good match. About the same time we were contacted by Ties and told that they had been informed about the possible match, and had ordered all of his records. After that, then we had a “presentation meeting”. This included us, our social worker, his social worker, and his adoptions social worker. We were presented with all of his medical history, and everything about him that the social workers knew. We were told to go home, study all his records, and make a decision on if we still wanted to pursue placement. We looked over all the paperwork that night, did some research on what we found, and knew by the next morning that we definitely wanted this little guy! We let our social worker know that we were interested in pursing placement, but we absolutely needed Ties to do their evaluation of him beforehand.

As of today, Ties is working on their evaluation. Hopefully they will be able to complete their work in two to three weeks. We will have a meeting with them were they will fill us in on all of their findings. That’s when we have to decide yet again if we still want to pursue placement. Personally, I’m glad that they do all this checking and double-checking. That way hopefully there are fewer disrupted placements. After Ties, we can start our visits with him, and if that goes well, then we can bring him home and into our lives!