As many of you know, we have been held up by the Central Registry in Ohio which has a huge back-log on clearing people for child abuse claims.  Even though we just had this done last year, we were required to get another child abuse clearance.  Because of budget cuts at the state level, the Central Registry is very short-staffed and a process which usually takes at most 30-days has been taking 90.  We filed our forms with them at the end of October and we were starting to get a little frustrated that we may have to wait until the end of January for this clearance.  We had talked to a couple of different people to see if we could advance part of the adoption process while we wait for the clearances, but nothing can move forward without them.

On Monday, I called the offices of Sharon Jones, the Ohio State Senator for Warren County, and talked with a very nice your lady named Megan.  She informed me that this has been a relatively common issue that they get called on and, while she was very sympathetic to our situation, there was a limit to what she could do for us.  However, she promised to call Central Registry and talk to their contact there and have them inform us on where we were in the process.  This afternoon Central Registry called us, told us that they were pulling our file, and that our clearances would be here next week!  Thank you God!  One more hurdle that we are over in what always seems to be a challenging process.  Hopefully our Oklahoma clearances are already here or will be shortly.

Cameron