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Adoption
Mrs.Johnson
member
Update on us... foster care?
Mrs.Johnson
member
in Adoption
DH and I are STILL waiting to adopt. We have been presented to a few BMs but no real news yet. We are going to attend a foster care orientation October 22 to find out if foster care is right for us. We really want either an infant or a toddler up to 3 years old. Does anyone have any experience with this? Are we being too picky by specifying an age group?
Thanks:)
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Re: Update on us... foster care?
I just wanted to say that I don't have any experience in this area, but DH and I are considering foster to adopt programs, looking to adopt in the same age range.
We have friends who started the process last December, and they just got their first foster. They specified that they wanted a girl 0-18 months old. They just got placed with a newborn baby girl. I think the more choosy you are the longer it takes, it probably just depends on your county's needs.
You're not being too picky at all. Its important for you to identify and communicate what is best for your family. As pp stated, the more specifications you have, the longer you may wait for a placement.
When my DH and I became FPs, we specified ages 0-3 any gender, any race, any medical needs. We received our first placement 3 weeks after being licensed. We've had 5 children in one year. We've had at least one child in our home every night since the first placement. Limiting it to young ages was important to us since we were still ttc. We wanted the children in our home to be within the same age range. As our children grow older, we will expand the ages we can accept.
Hey girl, I see your ticker says 18 months but i was just wondering when you started counting from? Is that from the time you have been done with your homestudy?
I'm sorry it is taking so long! I hope your baby is right around the corner!
We are currently going thru the process to be licensed. We have specified what age range, race, and if we would take a sibling group. My DH and I would like to expand that age group once we have adopted but for now we have limited it to 0-4 years old. Good luck and I hope your match happens soon!
You aren't being too picky. I have three children adopted from foster care in 1999 (they are almost 15, almost 14, and just turned 12 now). We received the first two (siblings) on 1996 at 8 1/2 mos and 19 mos, and the third in 1997 at 12 days old. It is rare that they get foster kids this young but not impossible. Older children are going to come with more issues/ emotional baggage. Our two oldest have some due to the fact that they had to visit w/birth mom for three years until adoption was final. It doesn't mean you can't successfully foster/adopt an older child, it just means it may be harder with more things to deal with. I wouldn't recommend it for first time parents unless you have some expertise in dealing with chidlren with emotional/behavioral issues.
When we were going through training, our social worker had us fill out and "acceptance scale" listing the conditions/issues we thought we could handle. It was a list that included all kind of issues from medical (blind, deaf, paralyzed, etc) ,to mental (Bi-polar, mentally handicapped,etc.) ,to behavioral ( ADD, ADHD , smoking/drinking/ drug abusing teenagers, teens who had been in the justice system, etc), to what I call situational (pregnant teens, pregnant teens wanting to parent, pregnant teens wanting to have an abortion, etc). There was also a section where you could indicate ages, genders, and siblings or not, and if so how many. She urged us to think long and hard about what we were willing to deal with because as much as it hurts the foster parent to turn a child away or become overwhelmed by the child's problems, it is much worse for the child that has been promised a home or a fresh start to be moved yet again. Don't let them push you into a situation you don't think you can deal with. Our social worker actually called us about a 5 year old boy who was on anti-psychotics but said "I don't really recommend you take him as your first placement, we are just trying to avoid putting him in an institution. You may get calls like this but you have to think and pray and decide what is best for you.
We even did respite for another foster family while they were on vacation with their bio kids. It was a boy 5 with ADHD who had been sexually abuse by his father and older brother (at father's urging) and his sister who was 2. They were hoping we would adopt them ( and the 9-yr-old brother) but after a week, we realized we couldn't deal with the 5 yr old and didn't even want to contemplate the 9 yr old. Ironically, our son we got at 12 days has ADHD and Tourette's Syndrome but at least the doesn't have the emotinal baggage of the sexual abuse and neglect like the other boy did.
Other factor will influence your choices. Once a child is placed with you, you may have to change your criteria based on the situation you already have. We were approached about another child while in the process of adopting our 3 who were ages 5, 4 and 2. The new child was 18 months and we didn't feel like we could take him on while trying to navigate the adoption. We decide we couldn't take a child with mobility issues because our house has stairs. You will also be limited by the size of your house (there are criteria about how many can share a bed room and each has to have their own bed, opposite sexes sometimes can't share a room even if they are young..this varies by state, etc) and the size of your vehicle. We once kept a sibling group in an emergency overnight until another home could be found. They were within our age range and we would have kept them permanently but we didn't have a van at the time and I couldn't go anywhere until they came and took them else where or my husband was home so we could take two cars.
I didn't mean to write a novel...just jumping on the chance to share a littel of my experience. I don't know if you are spiritual at all but I will tell you that God led my oldest three children to us. We aren't saints or heros but here is a good chance that two of our children would not be alive today if they ahd remained with the birth parents
PAL/PGAL Welcome
I am in the process of adopting my 10 mo. old foster baby that I received at birth. I wouldn't change my experience for the world. She is the perfect match for us! I see some people doing domestic adoptions that are not as far along in the process of adopting as I am and that amazed me. They could easily pay 20k plus, and I haven't paid a penny. But every situation is different.
This is my second fosterchild. My first one was reunified after 1 year. It was heartbreaking. But we are still in contact and I am thankful every day that I had the opportunity to know her and help raise her. The heartbreak of kids or babies leaving is the real price you will pay for chosing fost-adopt. And it's all the luck of the draw, mostly.
Another downfall for fostercare with me was: constant paperwork such as having doctors complete special forms, prescription logs, family contact logs, constant social worker visits (we usually had at least 2-3 a month between the agency and the state), family visits (we had 4 hours visits weekly in the begining with 2 hours additional driving time!), house inspections (not sure why but we had TONS). I basically had to quit my job or change to part-time, which is what I did. It was virtually impossible for me to satisfy all the requirements while hubby and I were at work every weekday.
Again, it was all worth it by far.