Anyone foster a family/friend's child?
Some background: my family has been friends with the family in question since we both moved into the neighborhood around the same time ~25 years ago. I refer to A & J (husband & wife in their 50s) as my "aunt & "uncle" & their kids M & D (both now in their 20s) as my cousins even though we're not technically related.
Their son D (adopted from Guatemala) has mental health issues & became a father back in December. His girlfriend also has mental health issues & has already lost a previous child to state custody. DCYF are involved in this case with the new baby boy, S, because of this history but decided to let D try to parent since it's his 1st child.
Fastforward to now. A&J have been taking care of S more & more; DCYF is aware & is moving towards placing S in foster care. A retired from teaching last year but works part time; J still works full time. Their daughter M is married & lives out of state. Not sure about baby mama's family but from what I've been told they'v pretty much disowned her & have no contact with the baby either.
A&J have discussed the situation & have decided they are done raising kids & won't move to adopt S but are ok with fostering but would like to "co-foster" with a known family if possible. I talked with A this past weekend & she mentioned she would like for DH & I to be that family. She is meeting with DCYF in a couple weeks & plans to talk to them about this then.
FWIW I've been trying to get DH to move towards adopting for some time now & have put my foot down in regards to this next IVF being my last if it doesn't work & we have no frosties. Although I'd rather not do an open adoption (DH is from India so we'd likely go there) I think fostering may help move DH in the direction of adoption in general. It'd be helpful to this family (we live literally 1 mile from each other) & getting state certified to foster means a lot of the leg work will already be done if we do go the adoption route.
Anyone have any experience in this area?
(sorry that was longer than I anticipated)
Re: Anyone foster a family/friend's child?
We were asked to adopt DD by her family. She was taken at birth from BM and placed in foster care. DD's grandparents were her foster family and when it was decided that they could not keep DD they told the SW that they would only agree to adoption if we were the family. It was a lot of hoops but we finally brought DD home at 26 months from Canada and are very happy. We are in constant contact with DD's birth family. The grandparents like like grandparents and aunts and uncle ask as aunts and uncles. I would think co-parenting of any kind would be hard.
Talk to SW and see what the options are and then go from there.