How our match happened

Going into this process we were given a rough outline of how things happen but were also told that no two instances were the same and there are no guarantees.   Since June we have been inquiring on kids with profiles on two of the main adoption sites and were also getting leads directly from our case worker.   We had an open inquiry on a 7 year old boy, when our case worker followed up with his social worker we found out about junior.  

The social worker thought that we would be a much better match for a 5 year old boy that she was working with.   On Thursday we were given brief backgrounds about both boys and we agreed that the 5 year old sounded like a better fit for us.   We set up a call with our CW and his SW for Monday afternoon.  Additional information was shared, we asked questions, they asked questions and the meeting ended with our being told they were having a staffing on Wednesday morning to determine next steps.  

I was about to walk into a meeting at work that Wednesday morning when my phone rang and it was an unknown number.   I stepped into a conference room my heart beating a mile a minute to be told that they thought we would be a great fit for junior and they had a strange proposition for us.   Due to circumstances they were working on a tight time frame to find a home for the kid.   They were looking for somebody to do respite for him the following weekend.   For kids in foster care if parents need a night off for work or other reasons only another licensed foster family can be used this is called respite.    We agreed.

This is not normally how things happen.  The process normally goes from a phone call that you have been selected to having a formal presentation after which you decided if you want to move forward, then a transition plan is put in place.  The first meeting usually takes place for a couple of hours at a park or ice cream shop and you slowly work up to overnights.  We were going straight to spending 24 hours with him.  Yikes!

Thankfully that meeting went very well and yesterday we had the formal presentation.   He comes for 2 nights this weekend and hopefully get a more finalized date early next week.    So yeah this was a bit backwards and not at all what we were expecting but hey that's what life always seems to throw at us.  

Oh and for legal and privacy reasons we will not be sharing the kid's name on public forums like here or Facebook.  He may continue to go by junior or we may come up with another alias for him.