Foster Care Update

As many of you may have gathered from previous blog posts or Facebook, Jennie and I have decided to start pursuing the avenue of adoption through the foster care system.  We are still attempting to start a family using our wonderful donor, however, as time passes and we continue to age we decided that it couldn't hurt to start looking at other options. So this is how we landed in our current situation.

I have always had a strong interest in adopting from the foster care system. Jennie and I have talked a lot about how we might build our family.  We've talked about the fact that we would like to have 3 bio-kids and then once they're grown and in college perhaps we would adopt a sibling set through foster care since we'd have the empty bedrooms :)  I really want a large family. I know a lot of people think it's somewhat old fashioned, but my ideal number of children would be 5.

I do have some experience with kids in the foster care system. When I was an undergrad student I decided to spend a summer interning with Child Welfare Services in an effort to figure out whether or not I wanted to pursue Social Work. Obviously, that experience had a major impact on me as I now have my Masters in Social Work, although my initial thoughts of working in that particular sector changed.  During my time at that internship I had the opportunity to work with children and families toward reunification, facilitate sibling visits, attend court hearings, and ultimately work on finding adoptive families for kiddos whose parents no longer had parental rights.  Being exposed to children in the foster care system really opened my eyes to the world that these children exist in.  Many of these children only need temporary stable, loving homes while their parents/families get their lives together in order to better care for their kids in the future.  I've always thought we could be a rock in these kids lives and provide that love and stability, even if only for a short time.

When Jennie and I were still living in Syracuse I even tried for a good 6 months to convince her that we should foster.  I figured we were young and able and had a spare bedroom--looking back I'm glad we didn't jump in then because I'm not sure we were emotionally ready or completely financially stable!  Fast forward a few years and we've decided to revisit the potential of foster care.

Initially we weren't sure we were interested in adopting, at least not right away since we'd always talked about building a bio-family first.  However, after attending foster care orientation and learning that if you're just wanting to provide foster care you would receive kids who were 12 and up, we reconsidered what we wanted.  It was actually Jennie who after the initial orientation said, "you know, I think maybe I am interested in adoption." I was pretty shocked, because I wasn't sure this would be something she'd be open to, at least not at this phase in our life together. So after a lot of conversation and talking through all the possible scenarios we decided to register for foster parent training as a foster/adopt family!

It felt like as soon as we hit enter on the electronic registration form we received an email from the program coordinator asking us if we'd like to expedite our certification process.  What this would mean is that we would still have to go through the same process as every other foster/adopt family, we'd just complete everything in 1 month instead of 3-4.  At first we weren't sure (well let's be honest, I was all over it and Jennie wasn't sure!) because we were thinking we'd have 3-4 months to prepare ourselves and our house before we could expect any children.  But ultimately we decided that if a system that is sometimes notorious for moving at the pace of a snail was willing to get us through the process quickly, why not take them up on the offer!

So as you can all probably imagine this last month has been quite a whirlwind! Let me tell you the amount of paperwork you have to fill out and sign is HUGE (as it should be)! Going through our home study packet and filling out and signing everything felt a lot like closing day when we bought our house, and this is just the screening portion!  We've filled out questionnaires and had interviews with our home study worker about our childhoods, how we were as teenagers, and what our relationship is like.  We've been completely open and honest about everything because we know it's important for the agency to know where we both come from. We've gotten a lot done so far. We've been finger printed, did our initial home study walk through, and completed 2 out of 3 of our all day foster parent trainings. Jennie has gotten her CPR/First Aid and I have my class next weekend.   This week we have to go get physicals and cleared by the doctor. Basically they are just ensuring we don't have any communicable diseases and that we're healthy enough to take in a child.  Once our background checks from Colorado, New York, and Virginia (why did we have to move so much!!?!?) are back we'll sit down with our home study worker to review our home study and she'll do her final walkthrough of the house. Once this is finished she will go in front of a certification committee and present us and they will decide whether or not to certify us.

We didn't have to do a ton of stuff in the house to get it ready. The main thing was that we had to clean out the spare bedroom which was serving as a bit of a garage and paint it. We also had to install a smoke detector on the main floor of the house because we only had one upstairs. We had to gather/buy furniture, bedding, toys, and books.  One of the most difficult things is that in order to be certified you have to have everything prepared for the age range and number of kids you say you could foster.  We've said that we will foster/adopt infant to 5 years old, and up to two if they are a sibling set.  So we've set up a crib that converts into a daybed and a twin bed.  The room is coming together nicely and is super cute!  Some of the things we didn't expect was that we had to physically lock up all of our medications and cleaning supplies/hazardous materials. So we bought a locking tackle box to put all of the medicine in and figured out a lock for the downstairs bathroom sink cabinet to put all our cleaning supplies in.  We had to buy and put on all the plug covers for outlets and still have to install the child safety latches for the kitchen sink cabinets and the upstairs bathroom cabinets.

The list of what we have left to do is getting shorter and shorter.  We have our physicals tomorrow, I have CPR/First Aid on Saturday, and we have our last foster parent class on the 26th. I also need to look into finding a daycare center near our house that will accept one or two kids and the state child care stipend program. But really that's it!

The kid(s) room is all ready and we've been told that we can expect a placement at the end of July! This summer is definitely shaping up to be a bit more exciting/life changing than I think either of us imagined, but we're really excited for what life has in store.