There is likely one of a few things happening in this situation:

1: The person may already have a pending application that hasn't been processed yet. In this case, the person will see an error message and be blocked from completing another application until their already submitted application is move to in process, accepted, rejected, or archived.

NOTES: 

• If a foster or adoption applicant has a Pending review application but wants to submit another application, you must move their application to either In Process, Accepted, Rejected or Archived before they can submit another application.
• The applicant can re-apply even if another application has been rejected; having a rejected application on file doesn't automatically block them from submitting another application.
• Rejecting an application does not apply the "Do Not Adopt" attribute to person's record, so we recommend adding that manually if the person belongs on your "Do Not Adopt" list. 
   

2: If the above does not apply, instead of being blocked, a person already in the system will get a verification email when they enter their email address to first start an application. That's just to help confirm they are who they say they are. They just need to go through the link on that verification email and they'll be able to continue with the application and submit it without any issues. 

• The link in the verification email expires 15 minutes after it is sent. If the link says it is expired, try entering your email address to start the application again to trigger a new verification email.
• If the person only has a phone number in the system but not an email address, they will need to contact you and have their email address added to their record before they can proceed.

3: The phone number they are trying to use is also on another person record in your account (possibly just another member of the household). The phone number just needs to be removed from that other record; if it is the only phone number on the record, click the "Phone Refused" checkbox after clearing it out so that the system will allow you to save without a phone number.

4: The email address that they started the application with is different from the email listed on their existing person record. This may be the case if the applicant is seeing an error message about their phone number already existing in the system. This means the system didn't recognize the email address in the very first step of the application, but then did recognize the phone number that was entered. In this case, the applicant should reach out to you and let you know that they are blocked from applying. Then, you should simply check to see if the email they are trying to apply with is different or matches the email on their existing record. If the email is new and doesn't match the existing record, you will need to update the email to the new email in the person record.