Expectations

I took copious notes during the Adoption 101 class but I’m going to try to sum it up.

Expectations if you foster to adopt: placement – 6 month court review – 8/10 month review – 12 month court review – termination of parental rights – 90 day appeal – adoptive placement – finalization.  Inside these steps are extensions for the parents to try to get their rights back.  The foster to adopt process takes a minimum of 15 months but usually is longer depending on the extensions.

Expectations if you straight adopt (kids whose parents lost rights but will not be adopted by the foster family):

• broadcast (an email we get that the kids are free and clear for adoption) – if no family is found from the broadcast, the kids get put on the TARE website
• if we express interest in a broadcast, our case study is submitted to the kids case manager.  For ideal kids, case managers get over 500 case studies.  In less ideal kids, meaning sibling groups, older kids or black kids (their words, not mine), case managers get around 250 case studies or less as medical issues or whatnot are presented.
• Selection staffing – the kids case manager narrows the 500 down to 3 to 5 families. Jen (from Arrow) tries to basically sell us as the ideal family for the kids.
• Case Record – we get all the info on the kids that the state has
• Presentation Staffing – the kids case manager basically tries to sell us on the kids
• 24 hours – from the presentation staffing meeting, we have to wait 24 hours then call the agency and say Yes or No.  We cannot say Yes to adopting the kids at that meeting, even if we know we want them.
• Pre-Placement visits – meeting #1.we go to the foster home and actually meet the kids for the first time ever; meeting #2. we keep the kids for a day, take them to Sea World or something; meeting #3. the kids stay overnight.
• Adoptive Placement – if we get through all the stuff and have the kids placed in our home, we have to foster them for 6 months before we can adopt them
• Finalization – the kids are officially ours.  We can change their names, get new birth certificates listing us as the parents, and change their social security numbers.

Through this entire process, we have the right to say No.  And so do the kids.  If we get all the way through that process, we would not say No.  We would try to work with whatever comes up.

If at any time during the process, we say No.  The kids have to completely start over at the broadcast step. Thus why so many kids are on that TARE website!

Jen said if you go Straight Adopt, and you are one of the lucky families to be selected from the massive amounts of submitted case studies, the entire process takes about a year to get to finalization.  The hard part right now is actually getting selected. If we wanted a healthy white baby, it could be years before we even get the process going.  However, that isn’t want we want.  We want the kids that are older, siblings, and any race is fine, so we (hopefully) will be getting the process started sooner rather than later.

The waiting game

I haven’t posted in a few weeks because absolutely nothing has happened.  No calls, no kids.  This week we attended 2 training classes.  The first was to cover new rules about babysitters for the kids.  We learned that the ‘babysitter’ (someone who watched the kids for less than 8 hours and less than 2 times a week) has to have a background check done but does not need to know CPR/First Aid. The ‘short term provider’ (someone who watched the kids between 8 and 72 hours, including sleeping over) has to have a background check, CPR/First Aid, and a letter of recommendation written by us. The ‘respite care provider’ (someone that can watch the kids longer than 72 straight hours) has to have all the short term stuff plus take several of the classes we went through to get licensed – so realistically, you have to be licensed to foster in order to do the respite care.

The 2nd class was called Adoption 101.  It really should have been the first class we ever had. The Arrow employee that deals with the adoptions is named Jen.  And Jen is a straight shooter. In less than 2 hours, Jen set us all straight on the realistic process of fostering and adopting kids through the state. All those case workers telling us the phone would be ringing the second we got licensed – well – it is possible…but not likely. And Jen laid out why.  It is a lot of info so I’ll make the next post just about that specifically.

We got a lot out of this class but I really ended it with hope (which once you read the next post you may wonder why!). Several other class attendees have more experience in the process than we do and just hearing their experiences makes me know we will have our work cut out for us, but also makes me excited to have kids and provide them with a safe shelter and love.  We still strongly have the attitude that it’s OK that we don’t have kids yet.  The right kids will come when they are meant to be with us.

 

Keeping up the license

As a part of keeping your foster license, you are required to do training classes, read books, attend seminars…educational stuff…every year.  Today we did 4 hours of online training, covering Disaster Planning and Cultural Understanding (those are 2 different classes, not one class on disasters with cultural problems).  I also accidentally did an hour of training on car safety seats that I realized later I didn’t need to do. So now I know how to safely strap a kid into a car and how to get them to safety in an emergency, all while recognizing their culture.

The bunk beds are in, the waterproof protectors and sheets are on.  All that is missing are the kids to sleep on them. Last week we got called 3 different times, all with infants.  We didn’t plan on or set up for infants (no crib, high chair, stroller, changing table), so we said No to all those opportunities. We were also called with an emergency, where 2 small boys already in foster care had to be moved to a new home while the family is being investigated. The case manager talked herself out of giving us those boys since we are both working and the smaller boy needs all day supervision.

The family is being investigated because one of the kids had a head injury.  We have been warned that almost every single foster family will end up being investigate for one reason or another; injury to a child, the child calls a hot line and says we are abusing them, the agency is concerned about the treatment they are seeing, or we aren’t keeping up with our training.  There are any number of reasons – something I’m not looking forward to happening to us, that’s for sure.

We are ready and waiting still.  Say some prayers for us – that the right match comes along to make our family grow.