My next few posts will be addressing comments and questions that I have also received through emails. Some questions are a little harder to answer because every state has different laws, every foster care situation is different, and everyone has different thoughts and views.

Reader bjc commmeted:
I feel your frustration about how everyone else's rights are served before that child's (and as a foster mom, I have less than zero rights evidently.)
I have had my little boy in my home since he was two months old and he is now almost 3 years old. It is hard for me not to feel bitter about this whole thing.

I would appreciate any words of wisdom or inspiration.

I am struggling with how to answer this because I myself have been going through the same thing. Truthfully I am still going through it. I adopted a baby girl in November on National Adoption Day. She was placed with us when she was two months old and was adopted when she was a little over two years old. This was not an easy adoption and seemed to drag on and on. It probably would still be dragging on unless the judge demanded that the adoption get done or they (Child Welfare) would be in contempt of court.

The funny thing is that the adoption went through, and she is now legally our daughter but the paperwork is still unfinished. Every week or so, someone is calling needing different paperwork from the adoption placement agreement, birth certificate information, our personal information too, the subsidy paperwork, which is completely crazy. Let me assure you that all these people have the paperwork or least had the paperwork at some point since my paperwork came from them.

The day of the adoption a couple of hours before appearing before the judge, we learned that some of the paperwork was not in order which in most cases (meaning not National Adoption Day) the adoption would not have been allowed to go through. The judge had to agree,so we could go ahead with the adoption and allow our attorney to get the paperwork straightened out after the fact.

We are still working on and waiting to see if we get her birth certificate since nobody (including Child Welfare) had a copy with all the details. We have to wait and see in February if the paperwork was inputted into the computer and was not lost in the process once again.

Next I will talk about coping with the issues and continuing on with foster care.

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