We're moving right along....

          Yesterday we completed our training that was required in order to move on to Homestudy. We had Praesidium Risk Prevention in the morning & CPR & 1st Aid in the afternoon. Praesidium Risk Prevention is a training program that helps Foster & Adoptive parents know what to look for in order to lower the risk of abuse for your children. The class goes over typical behaviors of predators & how they prey on children. The class also covers steps to take to lower risks of accusations from your foster or adoptive children. We took lunch & after that we did our CPR & 1st Aid certification. We are now officially done with all of our training & are now waiting to move on to Homestudy. Because our agency has so many families coming through training their Homestudy workers are behind. We are expecting to wait a couple of weeks before we start that next step.

Mini PRIDE & training continues......

        Once our file was complete we still have to complete training. Since it had been over a year since our placement & we didn't complete the 30 hours a year required to maintain our license we had to start completely over. Our training consists of PRIDE training, which is basically your core classes. We completed our PRIDE training this past week & now have 3 more classes to complete before we move to homestudy. PRIDE training goes over the basic things to expect once you receive your placement. They cover discipline, sexual abuse signs & symptoms, behavior management, grief, SIDS, shaken baby syndrome and those types of basic topics. We still have to complete a 2 hour course on psychotropic medications which we will do Wednesday evening, Praesedium risk prevention (I have no idea what this is) which we will do Saturday morning, we have lunch, then we will complete CPR & 1st Aid. Once your training is complete you then move on to a homestudy worker. Our agency is currently a little behind, so we may have to wait 2-3 weeks before our homestudy interviews.

The File is complete..............

     An update on the process. Once we got the call about our application, there are still a few things to clear up before our file is complete to move forward. We have been busy the last month or so getting a few loose ends tied up & our son had surgery as well so things have been moving slowly. We both had to under go our FBI fingerprint & background checks. Our agency required us to pay this out of pocket, if your homestudy is approved they will then reimburse us the cost, about $48 each. We also had to do online medical consent training, get our pets shot records, as well as statements of health. The statements of health had to be written by our doctor. They basically say that we are healthy & able to raise a child. Our agency does not reimburse for this cost, so it is out of pocket. Our file is now complete to move forward to training. We are scheduled for our PRIDE training next month, along with 3 secondary training classes, we should be finished & heading into Homestudy by August. We have also been organizing the house to fit another child. The homestudy is an important time to prove your home is ready & able to welcome a child. We realized they want to see a child's room decorated and ready to go. With our last adoption we held out on decorating & buying things as we didn't know the sex or age of the child. I got advice from another Mommy a little further along in the process & she said we needed to decorate ASAP. Within a month of decorating the room (in a neutral theme) we got matched. I have also updated the blog format to show better on mobile devices. As I am new at this it took me a bit to figure that out. Oh, the pic above is our son from Halloween. His Daddy made this amazing costume & it was a crowd favorite!

    -Crystal