Question About Foster Agencies

msditz00

This is an honest question, but I think it is going to come off wrong so I have avoided asking it.  

When we started the process I had no idea that private foster agencies existed.  Why would you go that route instead of going directly through the state?  Are there benefits? I assume they charge $$$? Shorter waits?  Where do the kids come from?  Why isn't your state doing the placements? 

Obviously it is too late for us, we are already licensed and have kids through DCF.  Just curious about something that I learned existed only through these boards.

IdigDirt

I have heard they deal more with special needs kids but NJ doesn't have any agencies so I have no actual experience.

Dr.Loretta

I thought private agencies had more kids who were legally free for adoption? But I'm not well versed in this at all

MileHighMaam

We  went to the county   and  were told they were   not taking applications for people wanting to adopt  children under 10. They suggested we look at  private  agency.  The  agency works with all counties in the  state as well as out of state agencies. There are  fees for the  home study, training and networking but they are not  outrageous..

fajita814

Where we live, the state is too bogged down with huge case loads, so they contract with private agencies. There are 6 agencies that serve our area and they are on a rotation list with DCF...so when kids come into foster care, the agency at the top of the list gets them. Here there are no fees to go through a private agency and it pays the same for foster care/has the same benefits as going through the state.

plus12012

There are many states including mine that don't usually do infant adoptions unless the infant is part of a larger sibling group.

[Deleted User]

The user and all related content has been deleted.

sisibelle

It's interesting to see how so many states are different! In our state, there are a few contracted agencies that handle foster care and adoption along with the state. Some of the children in the other agencies are special need but more often they are placed with the other agencies because their are not enough foster homes with DFS.  We fostered our daughter before we adopted with DFS  and  we were not even aware of the other agencies. For the adoption we did have to work with another agency that is contracted by the state to handle adoptions which required additional classes beyond our PRIDE classes. 

msditz00

Thanks for all the replies!

mysticl

I used to work for a private agency.  We did not charge our foster parents money, we paid them.  We made our money from the state.  The benefit to using us was that we were more available to our parents.  Our case managers saw the children on a regular (weekly or more) basis.  I had parents who had done foster care through the state previously tell me they were lucky to see a worker once a month.  I can't answer the question of if there was a shorter wait as there are a lot of factors that go into wait time.  I will say that we served multiple counties/cities in our state so we had kids from all over.  If you go through your city or county you only get kids from there.  

My agency was a Therapeutic Foster Care agency (children with an Axis I and/or II diagnosis) when I started but we then expanded our license to include regular care.  The state placed our kids with us for a variety of reasons.  In some cases they were from small counties that did not have a lot of resources.  Also, most of our kids required a higher level of care and support that the state could not handle (see my above statement about visits).  Our licenses limited the total number of kids we could take in whereas the state just has to keep taking them and figure out what to do with them.  

As for your statement about it being too late for you that is not entirely true.  You could switch to a private agency after your current placements are done.  You could also switch now, it's possible DCF would let you take the kids with you to the private agency rather than uproot them.  I will say that is probably a more likely scenario if you were switching from one private agency to another as opposed to switching from DCF to private.