My Definition of Fun

I have a chart. It keeps track of all of the homestudies that I have faxed for a family to the worker of a child to be considered for that child or sibling group. I keep track and do follow up so that I can find out what happened to each home study. I am currently going over last year to see what happened with all of the homestudies.

A sample of the chart can be found here. Of course, I took out all names. This is a few lines from the April section of the chart. Here are some stats from January last year that will help explain the codes on the chart.

147 Homestudies were sent

4 of those homestudies were matched with children who came home during 2005 (HOME)
2 of those homestudies the families were matched with the children, but they declined after reading paperwork on the kids (MBD)
1 of those homestudies the family was matched but the match fell through (there are LOTS of reasons why this can happen)
35 of those homestudies had families that were matched with other children before a family was selected for this particular situation (MAC)
4 of those homestudies the family went to staffing but were not selected (SNS)
23 of those homestudies the families were ruled out before a staffing was held (FRO)
9 of these homestudies the families backed out before a staffing was held because they heard more about the children (FBO)
54 of these homestudies the child was matched with another family (CMF)
2 of the homestudies the children are no longer available (went back to birth parents, aged out, etc) (NLA)
8 of the homestudies the foster parents decided to adopt the children (FPA)
2 of the homestudies the children are still available (SA)
2 of the studies the family went inactive (decided not to adopt for one reason or another) (FWI)
1 of the studies was from a state that has forbidden us to work with them

Anyway, I tell you all this to say this. I got three computer games for Christmas: The Sims 2, Roller Coaster Tycoon, and Sim City 4. But compiling my statistics is far more fun for me than any of these games.

Sadie is helping me make a poster of all the kids that came home in 2005 that I helped match. There are a lot of them and it is fun to have been a part of it.

My mood is improving while I do something that most people would find tedious irritating work and I think is funner than computer games (which I really love).