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Friday 14 May 2010

Siblings

Right now, I am feeling thankful that we have not updated our homestudy to reflect our country switch to Ethiopia. If we had done so, we might soon be doing so again.

I suppose, in all the "not knowing what to do" of recent days, that the one thing we are perhaps doing, which needed/needs to be done, is sitting still and waiting. I have been feeling that doing the paperwork for the country switch was not yet necessary (despite also fearing that I would let a decade go by without doing anything...and watching my life pass by in blandness for lack of action). Today we received an email from our agency outlining the pattern of sibling referrals since restructuring, and providing a bit of history regarding sibling referrals pre-bankruptcy. The numbers are not encouraging.

This means we need to consider a few things - like whether we will continue to request siblings (which we really want to do), whether we want to increase our age request (which we have been considering very seriously - not just in response to a slow wait, which would be a poor motivation for making such a change), whether there are certain "special needs" with which we are comfortable (sometimes medical conditions which can be easily managed or corrected here), and so on.

The agency cannot predict or explain referral trends in regard to child referrals, but the pattern in their experience with the Ethiopia program has been very few available siblings, particularly babies and young toddlers.

If this had been a complete surprise, I would likely be more troubled right now. As it is, we have been watching nothing happen in regard to sibling referrals, and have been wondering what our adoption process will look like, so it is simply confirmation that there is a bit of an issue.

Good thing I'm already wearing my thinking cap.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

So sorry to hear about this latest news. I have been wondering about the sibling referals for a while. But then again I am now wondering about the single referals. At this rate it will be a long time. Hope you get some clear signs soon .

Claudia said...

Gah - the whole 'what should we do' question. I think my heart was in knots for a LONG time about that (and we weren't facing the aftermath of a bankruptcy, etc...) Hope your thinking cap is super-sized!!!

It Feels Like Chaos said...

I hope you get clarity and peace about what you should do!