*sigh*

I thought it was odd that we had our last interview 3 months ago and hadn't heard anything since then. So on Friday I rang the Department to find out where we were at. It turns out our social worker sent our assessment to the department in early July and it has been lost. Now they are running around trying to find it. Our social worker tells me she has recommended we be approved, so that is great news, but I confess I am frustrated at another 7 or 8 weeks lost. I wish I had chased it up sooner but I really don't know how long these things are supposed to take, and we have been so busy I didn't really realise how long it had been.

Children keep you young, right? Because it's looking like we could be in our 50s before the Panda comes along.

A helpful reader sent me a link to e-petitions, which I forwarded to the organising committee and thus:

"Hi All

We need your help in signing this e-petition (see the link below) in order to rectify a wrong in Qld with the increase of intercountry adoption fees. We would very much appreciate your help in our quest to have these fees kept in line with CPI (2.5%) and not as a cost recovery exercise by the government.

Once again the Queensland government is making it difficult for couples wishing to adopt from overseas. They are proposing to increase the fees paid to Adoption Qld by 250% to over $5000.00. Below are a few reasons for our concerns

Local adoption costs $500 - intercountry over $5000.00 because the Qld government say they have no responsibility to overseas children or families wanting to adopt from overseas.
This increase is pure cost recovery - there will be no increase in service or post adoption services put in place for our adopted children
No other government department does this kind of cost recovery.
They state this increase won't affect families as adoption is expensive anyway. Some families will not be able to adopt as it is getting too expensive.
Why are we being discriminated against???
Below is a link to an e-petition we have set up with the help of Pat Purcell. If you have not already signed a paper copy of the petition that has been circulating in recent weeks, please follow the link below and these 5 easy steps:

Yes - you want to sign petition
accept conditions
write down number -continue
fill in details including number from previous page
submit

http://www.parliament.qld.gov.au/view/EPetitions_qld/CurrentEPetition.aspx?PetNum=885
Thank you for taking the time to do this if you have already signed a paper petition on this issue please do not sign the e-petition

Thank you for your help & if anyone on your email list would like to help please pass it on – the more signatures we can collect the more convincing will be our protest!

Please feel free to circulate this to anyone --- anywhere in Australia.

Many thanks

Mark & Sharon

President & Vice President

IAFQ Committee"

You have to be a voter in Queensland to be able to sign this petition. Please send onto anyone you know who you think may be supportive.

More Trixi...

The old fashioned way...

My baby sister had a baby of her own yesterday. Trixi Emilia Jayne was born at 4.45am by emergency caesarian. It's amazing how few hours of labour Jen had to go through before she acknowledged that adoption looked pretty bloody good in future :).

Trixi is a delightful little creature. I hope that she will have little sister or brother around the same age as our China Girl. Otherwise she can be the extremely cool older cousin that Gemma is going to be to Trixi.

The Queensland Government is planning to increase the cost of International adoption by 250%. Given that it's already an incredibly expensive business, and most of us are not Angelina Jolie or Madonna, this seems a bit unfair.

I could get pregnant and give birth in the public system without paying a cent and that would cost the government thousands of dollars.

Here is an extract from an email from the IAFQ (International Adoptive Families of Queensland.)

1/ The department is planning to increase assessment fees by 250% for intercountry adoption assessments to $5060 on 14 October. There is no fee increase planned for local adoption assessments which remain at $486.30. We are being discriminated against because the Department don’t view intercountry adoption as their “core business”.

2/ No one else will benefit other than the Government. This extra revenue will not be channelled into better post-adoption services or efficiency gains - it will be removed from the operating budget for the next year.

3/ Our community is being punished for not taking up fostering. Increasing our fees is a deliberate ploy to play to a group who are so heavily emotionally invested that they will do anything or pay anything to complete their families.

4/ We are not rich people, many people will be tipped out of the process by this increase in fees. Despite the Government playing the emotional card we all have a finite amount of money.

If you are interested in signing a petition to be tabled in parliament, please email me on sandie68@gmail.com and I will send it over to you.

Friday, July 6th was my 39th birthday and it was also the day that our social worker rang our children's guardians (in the unlikely event that Scott & I perish in a firey car crash) to check that they are cool with making decisions regarding our kids, including one adopted one. Luckily, we had checked with them first and they answered the questions correctly :). All going to plan, their services will never be required, but it's nice to know that the department are covering all the bases.

We had our final (hopefully) social worker interview yesterday. You will be happy to know there were no invasive personal questions... other than the regular-garden-variety-invasive-personal questions. Just stuff about what our childhoods were like and how we get along with our siblings, mainly. There was also a part where we had to look at a list of potential problems we could encounter with an adopted child and say whether we thought we could handle them. These included a child who won't show affection, a child who steals, a child who was born of rape or incest, a child with a facial birthmark and numerous other possibilities.

We know there are some things that would be very hard to handle. We are unlikely to face some of these issues adopting from China. The health requirements for Australia are pretty strict so we figure if our baby can get past the Australian government, then we can deal with anything else. We have a wonderful family doctor and we will know plenty of other people who have adopted from China so we will have many supports available to us. And if a situation becomes really hard to handle, then we will take ourselves off to a professional for assistance.

Some of the problems that adoptive children face are the same problems that all children face. Scott & I firmly believe that in the face of an issue, we have to consider whether it is an adoption-related issue, or if it's just part of being a kid.