Matchmaker, Matchmaker,
Make me a match,
Find me a find,
catch me a catch
Matchmaker, Matchmaker
Look through your book,
And make me a perfect match

We have been in the “matching” process for a few weeks now.  This means that we are actually looking for kids, rather than waiting to look for kids.  There are limitations as to when we can look at “the books” that are filled with profiles of our potential kids, so we have only really done that once.  At that point, we marked a number of sibling sets so that our social worker could contact their social worker and claim our “interest” in the children.  Some we heard back from and the kids are unavailable. Some we didn’t hear back from at all.  A couple are available and a continued dialogue is underway. Additionally, one of the social workers that had a siblings set that we inquired about that is now unavailable contacted us about some kids that may be coming available.  So this means, that we have a good dialogue going about 3 different siblings sets.

Initially, we felt very optimistic since we got some immediate response to our inquiries, now communication feels very slow.  Our social worker is only in Wednesday-Friday, so some weeks we don’t really hear much news at all.  At this point, we are waiting for some of our questions to be answered and for the kids social worker to offer us a disclosure meeting.  At the meeting, we will learn everything that the county knows about the kids and we can examine every document that they have.  That is the point that we decide whether to take the “leap of faith” and decide if those kids are a part of our family, forever.

When we first heard about “matching picnics”, J- and I groaned internally and thought that we would not want to go to one.  It is basically a big event where a bunch of adopting parents get together with a bunch of available kids and their social workers.  It seemed weird and uncomfortable to have these kids competing for the attention of the adults and hoping that one will choose them.  Since then, our agency has set us straight. We have read the rules, which are set up to protect the kids and ensure that they have fun.  Apparently, it is usually the adults that are uncomfortable and awkward, but the kids thrive on all of the attention.  These events also have very good matching results. So, we have decided to go and next week, we will be attending our first.

It kind of feels like a blind date at this point.  We don’t know if the kids that we are in conversation about will be there and I am not sure if we will find out as the day approaches.  Regardless, there may be other kids there that we will want to inquire about.  One thing is for sure, it will the first time that we will come face to face with actual kids needing a home.

As a social worker, deciding on a match can’t be an easy decision. During our training, our agency had us do a role play where we looked at several families to place a kid with. There were a lot of complex factors like ethnicity, other siblings in the home (and their ages), neighborhood,  and gendered role models.  Of course, this is not to mention the priorities of the adopting parents which may limit the contact in the first place and may bias the social workers interest, as well.  In this exercise, we really had no choice but to turn someone down, even though all of the families had some really great qualities and some qualities that would specifically be very good for those kids.

Several people that we met that used our agency had kids in their homes within 4-6 months of beginning the matching process.  Since we have been eager for so long, we hope that our time line is this short, but many families are in matching for much longer. It makes sense that it takes a long time, since these kids are in stable homes and it is very important that it is a successful match for everyone involved.  But, on our end, entering this phase has upped the anticipation and we hope to meet our kids very soon.