Frustrating Set-Back

We regret to inform everyone that our social worker has denied our home-study.

We began looking for social workers that are able to provide home studies for families living abroad back in early October.  We found one and told her that we were interested in adopting a ten year old boy from Ukraine.  She said that she was willing and able to do so.  When we picked her up from the airport she immediately started telling us that we are being fool-hardy and that we should reconsider our desire to adopt.  She made it very clear that she was not in favor of older child adoption and international adoption.  She continued to counsel us that we should choose instead to adopt a child from the United States that was under 4 years old.  We didn’t want to do that and felt that our decision to adopt and older child from Ukraine was firm. She continued to be pessimistic throughout the process and said that despite her reservations she would write our home study.  The home study she did was fine and she found no reasons within our family or our marriage that would raise a red flag saying that our family was not stable or had serious issues that would not be beneficial for an adopted, post-institutionalized child.  We asked her originally to approve our adoption for up to two boys ages 7-10.  She appeared fine with this decision and wrote our home-study accordingly.  We found out that the child that we are seeking to adopt has a best friend who we are considering adopting as well.  We are not completely sure of this decision right now but we asked her to change the age range from 7-10 to 7-11 years.  The second child just turned 11 in October 2011.   She then sent us an e-mail denying to write our home study at all.  She said that her decision is based on the fact that we have not listened to her counsel and that we have no idea what we are getting ourselves into.  I agree to the fact that there is no way to completely know the impact of our decision but we are taking on-line classes, reading books, and speaking with others who have adopted older institutionalized children.  We are preparing ourselves the best ways that we know how. 

We feel that her decision to deny our home study is based solely on her personal opinion and not based on all the facts.  She agreed that our family was “lovely” but it was apparent that she couldn’t fathom why our family would consider to take such a risk in bringing in a post-institutionalized child into our home.  Our hearts desire is to give orphans a home.  We know that there are risks and we are trying to utilize all the resources available to us to minimize such risks. 

We are appealing her decision and would also like to see that if she is against older international child adoption that she should make that fact known prior to taking clients.  We have been working with her since Oct 2011 and have spent $2,800 on her services alone.  Now all of that time and money is gone and we will have to start over completely, which pushes us months behind our goal to have our adopted child in our home .

With all that said, this is not the first time in our lives where we’ve had to pick ourselves up and dust ourselves off.  We are continuing to press forward and are seeking for another home-study provider that is sympathetic to our decision.  The one advantage is that we have all the paperwork we need for the hone study and all the original documents.  We are not angry with her but we are frustrated with her final decision.  We will continue this race and will not grow weary because the Lord is on our side and has ours and Vitaliy’s best interest in his hands.  God’s timing and will is perfect and we will continue to spend time on our knees and listening intently to the Holy Spirit.  

Please join with us in prayer and as we fight the good fight, following God’s call to give homes to the homeless and love those we are hard to love. 
Thank you