Analysis

My mom and dad's official foster parenting license is pictured above. From this image, I know that the document was issued by the State of Illinois Department of Children and Family Services. The Supervising Child Welfare Agency is listed as Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Chicago Department of Social Services. It's interesting to note that Catholic Charities uses Church dioceses to divide up their districts as opposed to city or county lines. According to the mailing address, my parents were living in Oak Lawn, a southwest suburb of Chicago, at the time of Maria's adoption. On the left hand side of the page, it's evident that my parents officially became licensed on May 21, 1996, just three days before Maria was born. The document also lists the expiry date of their foster parenting license as May 21, 2000. Below that, the "Area Used for Children" is listed as the "entire single family home." This piqued my interest because I know that my parents were living in a townhouse at the time. This begs the question of what DCFS considered a single family home in May 1996. Next, the Age of Children Served is recorded as "00 YR to 18 YR," which makes sense when considering a person legally becomes an adult at the age of 18. The Capacity is listed as "002," meaning that the maximum number of foster children my parents were permitted to care for was two. In the bottom right hand corner, the signature of the director is visible as either "Jess M. Donald" or "Jess McDonald." It appears that this signature was rendered onto the document during printing given the fact that both the text and the signature are the same shade of blue. The background of the document features a light blue watermark of the Illinois state seal. The general production of this document is interesting as well. It appears that a typewriter was used to fill out the empty spaces on the form. This technology is reminiscent of the technology during the 1990s. It's likely that the Catholic Charities office had yet to switch over to computerized programming for these licences. This also makes me wonder when typewriters became a standard practice at Catholic Charities. Did they used to hand write these documents? If so, did illegible handwriting ever cause any mix ups or mistakes? Overall, it's been incredibly interesting to analyze such small piece of paper that has held so much weight in my family's history. Without it, my parents never would have been able to adopt Maria. Who would have known that a simple piece of paper would be the thing to grant my parents custody of a newborn baby?