The Black List Panic of 2010

Our home study has been approved! We are still in this perpetual holding pattern until we get the copies in our hot little hands, but at least they are somewhere on their way! I was hoping to get them today or Monday, but it may be the middle of next week. Jenna caught a mistake with the agency name on one of the forms our adoption agency sent her, so she had to request a new one. Our social worker has her own home study agency, but the home study report actually goes through a child placing agency in Texas, and their name will be on our home study. That little unknown fact caused a minor atrial fibulation last week when I found that out.

Russia puts out a "black list" of agencies every 3 months or so...the list is supposed to be updated every 3 months, but the last one took 9 months to be updated. If your home study agency is on the black list, your adoption process stops until the home study agency is removed from the list. If you're in the middle of your adoption you can either wait it out or find another home study agency and redo it. All that costs precious time and money. How do you get put on the "black list?" Mainly it is for not turning in post placement reports on time to Russia. From what I understand though, it is not a very fair system, as the home study agency (unless they are also the adoption agency) does not send the post placements to Russia. They submit them to the adoption agency who then forwards them to Russia. So in actuality there could be several causes as to why post placement reports are not turned in on time...the parents not taking the responsibility to initiate the reports, the home study agency not getting them to the adoption agency on time, or the adoption agency not submitting them to Russia in a timely manner. The home study agency gets the brunt of the repercussions though. It is such a big deal that a lot of adoption agencies make you pay a $2000 deposit that is refunded back to you when you have submitted all four post placement reports on time.

While I was searching for a home study agency, the new black list had come out in November. Kristi, the Russian program director, strongly encouraged us to be careful of anyone who had been on the black list and was now off, so I only considered agencies who were not on the new one or the old one. Jenna's company was not on the list, hence the reason we hired her, but this child placement agency that Jenna works with was on the old list. I couldn't find the new updated black list right away, and my Dry Idea was not living up to its name. I finally found a Russian adoption website that had the new list, and thankfully this agency had been taken off. Jenna later told me the reason they had been on the list to begin with was because an adoption agency wasn't meeting the requirements. I'm sure I was told about all of this and probably didn't translate the real meaning as I was pretty focused on whether to use my new handy dandy Eureka steam mop or good ole Pine Sol to clean my floors for the home visit (Should I use chemical free mopping to show my concern as a parent for the environment, or should I use a chemical with strong fumes so she'd know that Merry Maids had nothing over me?--it was potentially a life altering decision--or so I thought at the time).

So, the Russian Black List Panic of 2010 turned out not to be the epidemic I had feared last Thursday afternoon. I have faith that this agency will stay off the list.

Still waiting patiently at the mail box.....really, not so much any more.