Categories: uncategorized
Date: 18 October 2006 16:13:55
Woodward and Bernstein move over, I can follow a lead as well as you!
- last meeting with SW for the home study assessment i'm told that my Criminal Records (CRB) check would not be enough to clear me for the adoption panel. i only moved to the UK when I was 19 years and 2 mo. old, so the CRB would only cover me since then. For the time that I was 18 (+2 months) I would have to get checked by the FBI.
- Social Worker (SW) hands me pages printed from the FBI's website stating I would need to send a set of fingerprints to the FBI so that they could check me.
(NB: just a note to Americans reading this. In the UK they do not fingerprint you unless you are involved in a crime investigation, unlike in the states where children are commonly fingerprinted in schools for identification records [as I was])
- How do I get fingerprinted in the UK where it's not really done? Where do I send them? How long will it take? Isn't there another way? This seems rediculous.
- So I start by phoning the U.S. embassy branch in my area of the UK who shuffle a few papers, put me on hold and tell me to phone the main embassy in London and ask to speak to the FBI!
- So I do. (*"Hello, can I speak to someone in the FBI please?" *"One moment, I'll put you through" -- gosh!)
- I ask questions:
How do I get fingerprinted? - ask police
Where do I send them? - it says on the website
Can I do it faster than 8-10 weeks? - no
Do you care? - no, go to our website.
- Next step: go to local police station, explain situation, ask to be fingerprinted. Papers are shuffled, police look confused, police go ask other police. Police tell me that they are not allowed to do that, and I must make an appointment with my region's Central Police Office (est 45 min drive away) and pay a £20 fee.
- Fine. Make appointment for next Thursday. (Which was really last Thursday from today)
- Ask more questions, this time on an adoption message board. Am told by another American ex-pat to try the sheriff from my home state county for a notarised 'certificate of good standing'.
- Ask SW if this will be enough. SW asks an adoption panel member, who thinks it probably will be.
- cancel fingerprinting appointment
- Look up on internet and find contact info for the county sheriff of my home county and call his secretary. Explain to secretary who gets confused and tells me to speak to the sheriff himself. ("One moment, I'll put you through" -- gosh!)
- Explain everything to the sheriff (who seems a very nice and helpful man), who says he's never heard of a 'certificate of good standing'. But I could always phone the state police, who will probably give me a website.
- Phone the number given to me by the sheriff and speak to state police, who tell me (very quietly) to "come down to the office and pick up a form". I explain that this won't be possible and why and ask for the website that the sheriff told me about. Papers are once again shuffled and he starts to quietly and slowly give me the address as if he'd never heard of the internet before: "aaaa-chuh [long pause] teee for tango [long pause] teee for tango [long pause] peee" oh!! yes, just say www!! "coolonn, then i guess you'd call this a 'slash' " ugh! get on with it, this is an international call!
- go to website, enter my debit card details, my name, birthday, social security number, click 'submit', and then after ALL OF THAT, less than minutes later i have an offical certificate to print off from the state police in my state, U.S.A. saying I have no criminal record on their files.
- PHEW!! finally!!!
- be told by adoption agency that they are checking with their legal team as to whether the certificate is valid or not. back to square one??? ugggggghhhhhh!