I think I have fallen into the giant soup bowl of despair. To recap our last two months, my husband and I completed both our fostering and adoption packets, turned them in to Health & Welfare, have passed our background checks, have retrofitted our house to accomodate wee people, and have mailed in our check to pay for the home study. We were pretty sure there were just two smallish steps to finish before we were on the list for placements. The good news is that there are still only two steps; the bad news is that instead of a three-hour orientation session we were told we have to attend, the actual orientation session is now 27 hours long. Thanks to new H&W rules (and I'm not saying this is a bad rule, but it totally sucks that we didn't find out until now), applicants have to attend three day-and-a-half sessions in Boise before they can become licensed for foster care. In case any of you missed it, we live 85 miles from Boise. The trainings take place on Friday evenings and all day Saturdays for three weekends in a row. This requires three overnight stays in hotels. The next session starts April 30 and finishes May 15. I start working Saturdays on May 15 and I don't finish until around the first of November. My husband is a game warden, and he has a hunter's education class to teach in late April.
I just don't know what to do. Not only do things not look good for attending the next class, things *really* do not look good for attending any classes after that, at least until December. I don't understand why this has become so difficult all of a sudden. Yes, you definitely want to go into foster parenting as aware and as trained as you can. But I can't help thinking what sh*thouse luck it is that we are among the first applicants who fell under the new rule requiring an additional 24 hours of training. My husband and I are trying to do something good. We're trying to make the world a better place for children in trouble. I feel like the whole thing is so unfair--we can't have children of our own, and yet look at what hoops we have to jump through in order to take care of the children that any idiot can (and did) have.