Updating our story a year later is a difficult as not much has changed but at the same time, so much is different. I was laid off work in august 2014, due to company restructuring. Thinking it may be a blessing in our attempts to get a placement, we updated our worker to let her know I would be home until I found another job.
So we waited, again. After all, we keep hearing about how many kids in care need homes. While we are designated “foster-to-adopt”, we said we would also try fostering and take any shorter term placements. After 6 months of waiting for the phone to ring and some fruitless job hunting, we decided that I would go back to school in January.
I found an accelerated medical office program at a private college. It was only half-days so I figured I could still manage a foster placement if we were ever called. Fast forward to September 2015. I was into my final exams and a 3 week full time work placement to finish up my diploma program when we finally got a placement call for a pair of very traumatized little boys. There was no way we could handle their needs at this point in time so we had to say no. It broke our hearts.
We immediately contacted our worker and asked to go on hold until I was finished my program at Thanksgiving. That was last weekend. Now, funnily enough, here we are again, almost right back where we were a year ago. I’m looking for work with my shiny new honours diploma while we patiently wait for a placement call from our agency that has no placements.
There is one difference this time. We have decided that this ARE (Adoption Resource Exchange) will be our last. We desperately wanted to give our youngest daughter a sibling for her to grow up with and for us to love, but we can’t go on waiting for a placement phone call that only seems to happen when we have finally reached the point of taking up our lives again. It’s too frustrating. It’s too painful. And frankly, it’s so wasteful and disrespectful of not just our time but the children’s time too! Life is too short. These kids wait in other provincial counties for placements, but because these agencies don’t work together, the hopeful families and kids, continue to wait.
All those months I was just waiting, I could have been caring for a child in need of someone to care for them. The loss and waste of that astounds and saddens me deeply.