We did find out why it sometimes takes her a while to get back with us when we contact her. Apparently she is the ONLY person who does licensing in Hillsborough county. We were asking questions and she was explaining how the process will work from this point based on all the other families she has been working with. I almost couldn’t believe her when she said that she personally visits every prospective home in our county… crazy!

We went though the mound of paperwork she had given us to fill out. She was beyond impressed that we had everything done and that we hadn’t lost any of the packet. She said that is very rare. That was funny to hear, not sure why we would have scheduled the visit if we didn’t have things done. So, that was a big positive. We also had to find and make copies of several documents for her such as our driver’s licenses, insurance cards, marriage license, and tax returns. Good thing we have the new printer to make copies on!

She really liked our bedrooms. She started off very professional, but couldn’t help saying “awww… so cute” when we showed her our nursery. I had payed close attention to the rules for setting up the nursery (crib placement and pictures on the walls) so I was very happy that she didn’t see anything that needed to be changed.

We took pictures for our file of our house, bedrooms, and safety measures. We still need to take and send pictures of the community pool area showing that it has a gate around it and a life-saving device in the area. We also need to set up our car seat and send in a picture of that.

She spent quite a while talking with us about our family backgrounds. She wanted to know our parents’ personalities, what my siblings were doing, and how often we talk with each of our family members. All of her observations and our answers get put into a report that she will create. She will come back shortly for us to review and sign the report before she passes it along to her supervisor.

Our next step is a visit for the health inspector. She made the order for an inspection so we are waiting for a call from the health department to set up the inspection. They check for things such as our fridge being set to the correct temperature, our water temperature not being too hot, our medications and chemicals being sufficiently locked away, and general cleanliness. I’m pretty confident that we can pass that just fine, but I know from experience working at a grocery store that it just depends on how picky the inspector wants to be… they can almost surely find something if they feel like looking hard enough.

It was a good, but exhausting day.

This post was linked to Titus 2sdays, Teach Me Tuesdays, and Living Well Wednesdays. Check out these great blogs for recipes and other great homemaking ideas!

This particular issue started back in December. On a random Saturday, Jesse received an email from Aetna containing a certificate of prior coverage along with a message stating that this was being sent because we had either cancelled our insurance or because our policy number was changing. Since we hadn’t cancelled any coverage, we tried not to worry for the rest of the weekend and called first thing on Monday to verify that the policy number was changing. We were told that all Florida policy numbers were changing and that there would be no changes to insurance other than the policy number. After the new card showed up at the beginning of January, we assumed everything was fine and pretty much forgot all about it.

That is… until last week when I called to refill Jesse’s Pulmozyme. This is usually a $35 copay, but for some reason they were telling me it would be over $900 this time because it was no longer covered. Obviously, there is no way that we could afford a medication that costs over $900 per month so I started to panic.

Most of the freak out is due to the fact that we are almost out of time to switch plans if we decide that we need to. Since I ordered right at the end of last year, before our deductible started over, we had already “wasted” over 30 days on the new policy. Me, Jesse, and Sue have all been on the phone with Aetna trying to straighten out the whole situation but haven’t gotten too far yet. They are supposed to be looking into the problem and calling us back, but we haven’t heard anything yet.

Also, it looks like Pulmozyme will not be our only issue. Once this (hopefully) gets resolved, we can start fighting with them over Colistin.

So, what exactly is foster care? The more we talk with people, the more we realize that people don’t really understand what we are talking about when we say that we want to do foster care. That’s fine… in a perfect world there would never be a need for foster care. Here is the (paraphrased) definition we were given in our MAPP class:

Foster care is a protective service for children who have been abused, neglected, mistreated, or whose parents are otherwise unable to care for them due to illness or death. The child is given a family life experience in an agency-approved, certified, and licensed home for a temporary period of time. The primary goal of foster care is to provide safety and permanency. Foster parents are often in a position to help children and their families reunify if safety and well-being can be achieved or to assist in making adoption plans or other permanent plans for the children if reunification is not an option.

For example, (maybe not a good one-but it’s all can think of) in the movies when the police arrest a parent for some reason and then take the children back to the police station with them. Unless a relative of the child can be reached, plans are made to place the children in a foster home for the time being.

We really don’t mind answering questions, but we get really confused when people ask if we have a child picked out already. The answer is no. If someone makes a report that a child is being abused or neglected, the child gets removed from that situation as soon as possible. There is no child waiting in an unfit home for the past year while we get ready to be licensed.

Instead, once we get licensed we are essentially “on-call” for when a situation arises. From what we’ve been told that will probably happen almost immediately, maybe even same-day. When we receive a call we can choose based on whatever factors we feel are important (such as age or type of abuse) if we feel like we are capable of caring for that specific child.

Hopefully this makes our mission a little clearer.

This post was linked to Homestead Barn Hop, Titus 2sdays, Teach Me Tuesdays, and Living Well Wednesdays. Check out these great blogs for recipes and other great homemaking ideas!