The EP process is moving on with no stopping.
This also goes for the family court proceedings, there is no stoppage.
The only potential slow down might be due to vacation day choices the family court judges may take, which usually peak in the month of July and August.
Recently, however, the Ministry of Health and Welfare (MOHW) has put into the regulation the requirement by the agencies to make unannounced visits to potential adoptive families that are in the homestudy stage. This type of visit requirement does not include the visits during the post-adoption study period.
To the person I talked on this, I stated that this will not sit well with the American culture (probably European culture as well), where any visit by anyone is usually known ahead of time, and to do otherwise would be considered a bad manner.
The agencies in Korea are pushing back on this as they are acutely aware of the families' reactions to this. They are collecting data from the US and Europe to determine if any other countries are excercising this practice. The idea behind the unnounced visit is to catch a family by surprise and see how bad (or good) the candidate adoptive families are living in a normal day-to-day environment.
I think this is a very poorly thought out regulation, and I am not sure where and how they got such idea of having a 'Big Brother is Watching You' type of idea, but if I had to guess, it probably is an after thought that came out of Hyunsu O'Calaghan's tragedy.
Also, a foster mother in Korea was leaving the children in her home to tend to other things. When one day social worker visited the home unannounced, they found the child by himself. The agecy decided to remove the child from the foster mother. That child was Hyunsu.
During the high media coverage on Hyunsu, the foster mother went on the media blaming the agency for denying her request to adopt Hyunsu, but in fact the truth was that she never followed through the adoption request.
The unannounced visit regulation is not yet finalized, but I am thinking (and hoping) it woudn't go through.
The main problem I would see here with surprise visits during the homestudy stage is that many families may simply not be home! Those of us who were childless before we adopted tend to keep working until our child comes home in order to be able to afford the costs associated with adoption. Even if the social worker plans on coming in the evening, lots of people go out to eat and socialize (particularly before they have children) regularly, so this would create a nightmare of trying to catch a couple at home.
ReplyDeleteI'm curious as to what they hope to 'uncover' with these practices. We're still in the post-placement visit period at the moment, and I'm always happy for the social worker to come over whenever because I was fortunate enough to be able to give up work to be a full time mother. However, since the social worker needs to come when my husband is also home, we have to schedule appointments in advance so that he can arrange time off work.
Even couples who have existing children in the home may make use of childcare or leave children in the care of grandparents in order to work during the day. This is a simple reality for many families in America and Europe, where it can often be almost impossible to manage on just one salary.
Most social workers are reluctant to come out in the evenings since they often have families of their own to tend to after a day of work.
Surprise visits would be hard for my home study agency because they don't have a social worker in my city. They would have to fly someone out for the surprise visit and if we weren't home, it would be a big waste of time and money. It is hard enough to do scheduled visits.
ReplyDeleteThank you so much for this information. It is great to hear that the EP and court processes are running smoothly. Are you able to give us any estimate of how long the wait is from the time the EP is submitted until the approval? And how long from the EP approval to the court date?
ReplyDeleteWe received word on Thursday, June 12th that our case was submitted to the family court! We have not received a court date yet.
ReplyDeleteCongratulations, Jenna! Can you tell us when your EP was submitted? Ours was submitted in May (we accepted our referral in March) and we are trying to get an idea of when we might hope to be submitted to family court. Thanks!
DeleteWe accepted our referral in November 2012. Our EP was submitted February 20, 2014. Our EP was approved May 29, 2014, and then we were just submitted to court on June 12, 2014.
ReplyDeleteSteve, do you know if any July court dates have been issued yet? As always, thank you for all you do!
ReplyDeleteWe just got word this morning that we have a court date in Korea on August 29th!
ReplyDeleteCongratulations Jenna! We have just came back from our 1st trip to Korea and we are now waiting for the final call!
Deletehow was court Hiroko? what kinda of questions did the judge ask you?
DeleteThe court lasted only 6 min. The questions were 1. When did you arrive in Korea? 2. Did you meet your child and what was your impression? 3. Did you decide on your child's name? 4. What kind of father and mother do you want to be? I think that's about it.
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