Post Meeting

Our new worker is a fresh face. I'm pretty sure that she's younger than both my husband and I, which means she's got to be early-twenties. I'm also guessing that she's extremely new to her job, because she didn't know a lot of the reasons behind why they needed certain information from us.

Here's one of the most frustrating parts of this paperwork part of the progress: they always need more, and you never just get one big list of what they need.

When our first (the one we had while we were still in class) worker gave us a pile of paperwork. On top of the paperwork was a checklist of things they'd need from us - basically anything that was in that pile that needed to be turned in, the classes we had to take, and the copies of our things (licences, insurance, fingerprints) they'd need.

Since then, we've been asked for several additional things that were never on that original list. I point of fact, my checklist is complete (as far as paperwork goes) but there's still more things I have to turn in.

Here's the list as it currently stands:
- Copy of my Drivers License (Emailing this to her today)
- Pet Vaccination Records for Jazz
- Sample Menu (NEW from worker 12/2) (Emailed worker to get this form)
- Vehicle Mechanical Check (NEW from worker 12/2) (Slightly annoyed about this requirement since I live in a state that does not require checks for vehicle licensing, so it's not something I have laying around, which means we have to spend time & money to get it done.)
- Copy of Taxes from this year or last year (NEW from worker 1/4) (depending on how long it takes us to get this year's done)

Then there's the classes that still remain:
- CPR & First Aid training (someplace that will give us a physical paper certificate when we finish training)
- 2 classes through the website (Matt's done one of these, I haven't done either, but I signed up for both of them yesterday.)

While she was here yesterday, we learned that she didn't know how many workers we'd already had. She has no clue why they want our taxes, only that they do. She informed us that the fingerprint records aren't actually for Foster Care, they're for the contracting company that does the safety walkthrough on the house (when we get to that part).

We also started what they call our "Family Assessment" which is a LONG talk about our individual families, history, childhoods, education - everything. It's supposed to give a more well-rounded look at how you're family relationships and own personal history has changed and influenced who you are today. The biggest problem doing this last night for both of us was that the questions are EXTREMELY vague.

"What are your values and beliefs?"
ABOUT WHAT? That's not a real question, though I have a feeling that there's a large sub-section of people out there with certain religious values, or "American" values that have no problem rattling off a list of generic values/beliefs. Now, if you ask me a specific question, I'll give you a better answer.

I'm also willing to assume that a more experienced worker would have a better idea of what kind of answers they're looking for and be able to ask more leading follow-up questions to get more specific answers out of people like me.

We got through the extreme mess that is my family and history, did a bit about our relationship and stuff as a couple, and then she quickly ran through the family and history questions for my husband - his is much easier to get through. According to the worker, we still have a bit more to get through. It took about an hour and a half last night, and we've probably got about an hour and a half of Q&A left to get through.

2011 is a New (and Different) Year (we hope)

Tomorrow, my husband and I have a meeting with our 4th Foster Care Worker. Fourth. It's a little disheartening that it's taken this long to get a meeting set-up with her. Especially after I emailed her three or four times in the process of transferring from our previous worker and verifying our to do list, and she never once emailed me back. She called like two weeks ago and only mentioned that she'd seen the emails after I prodded about them, but didn't give an excuse to why she hadn't been in touch sooner.

Anyway. So this means that we've got a worker that I'm already feeling a bit antagonistic against and we've still got outstanding paperwork to do. Paperwork and the 2 web classes we have to do are on tonight's agenda.

Here's the list as it stands, with notes:

- Paper with Dimension for the Bedroom, and the window in the bedroom
- Copies of Matt's Drivers License and Insurance, Copy of my Drivers License and Insurance (doing this now at work to take home)
- Pet Vaccination Records for Sekhi & Sebastian (the Cats), Piper & Jazz (the Dogs) (Found the cat's, still need Jazz's.)
- Emergency Contact List still needs a hospital phone number (I think?)
- 3 Paystubs to prove Matt's employment (he can print these out at work today)
- Marriage License (So much easier to find than I thought it'd be.)
- Sample Menu (NEW from worker 12/2) (I imagine this is going to be fairly easy, I'll have to print out the form the third worker sent us to find out what they really want to know.)
- Vehicle Mechanical Check (NEW from worker 12/2) (Slightly annoyed about this requirement since I live in a state that does not require checks for vehicle licensing, so it's not something I have laying around, which means we have to spend time & money to get it done.)

Then there's the classes that still remain:
- CPR & First Aid training (someplace that will give us a physical paper certificate when we finish training)
- 2 classes through the website (Matt's done one of these, I haven't done either. Should only take an hour or so for each. Will have to track down the links to the site.)

I have ONE goal for this year. And that's to finish this process - the whole thing. I want to be licensed before the end of 2011.