Thursday, October 27, 2011

Slow.

The petition for termination of both of Lizzy's parents has been emailed over to the district attorney in the county she is from. He is going to look over it and "correct" anything that needs to be corrected and then send it back (to the worker?) and then it goes off to the judge for a termination trial to be set.

I am guessing 3 months from now?

This is a SLOW process. Lizzy's worker, the one I liked that just changed jobs, said after the last visit that this case will probably push 2 years. From what I have seen this is starting to look normal.

We'll see what happens.

4 comments:

Carol said...

I don't know when Lizzy's birthday is, but if the ADOPTION is not final by the time the child has its 3rd birthday, the state has to pay an adoption stipend until the child is 18. Not sure if that is on 18th birthday or at the end of the 18th year.

Also your experience actually goes against state policy that states that the goal is to close cases in 12 months. BUT it appears that more and more cases are extending beyond that.

Our Journey said...

Yep...2 yrs! We are at that mark for Little Man and it's looking that way for Baby Man too :( Their "goal" of 12 months seems to be rare! Going through the process though has made it so clear WHY these cases take sooooo long! Delay after delay :(

Denver Laura said...

My kid was in a foster only home from 9 weeks old until 3 weeks before her first birthday. Now that she's been moved, the 6 months starts over again.

Our previous kid was in the foster system for 6 months, moved to grandma for 4 months, then to us, stayed for 3 months then moved to another foster home (against our wishes) with her newborn brother which started her timeline over at zero. So yeah, the 12 month timeline although ideal is a high bar.

Karen said...

In our province, the "12 month clock" only pauses if reunification takes place, and it continues if they are moved to another foster home. There is no "resetting" the clock- so if Mom gets their child back after they've been in care for 6 months, and 3 months later the child comes back into care, the clock continues from them being in care for 6 months, it doesn't go back to zero, thankfully. And they do seem to be pretty good about following the 12 month rule. They don't have to have the case closed, they just have to know what is actually going to happen (i.e. working on final adoption papers, etc.)