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I am a foster mom and my sil is not. This is her situation.
She has temp custody of her sister's son who is 5. They have fought the system because she has temp custody of the boy and not legal guardianship since the biodad will not sign the papers.
Biodad has no job. Her sister has a learning disability from being dropped on her head at a young age. The bio mom is trying hard to let my SIL have the boy but getting flack from the biodad. She had to wait to go to court for them to get temp custody. Since DFCS was involved and now not involved they too could not get medical or a stipend. At court the judge gave my SIL Temp custody for a year. Then ordered the biodad to pay child support. This is the only way they could get any money since the kid wasn't in DFCS custody.
If the kids are wards of the state that's the only way you can get the monthly per diem. Otherwise you have to wait till the dad pays his child support. If he fails to pay in any month then you can not get any money it's not a guarantee. So needless to say my SIL hardly gets the court ordered child support.
Now once she got temp custody she was able to take that order and go to Social Services and get him medicaid based on his income, which is based on the court ordered child support. If any of the kids are under 5 you can then get WIC for them that will help a little on the grocery bill.
The only blessing in this whole thing is that the kids are not in DFCS custody. To make it legal you should go after legal guardianship if you do want to keep all of them and bypass DFCS.
With that you can keep them and bypass the foster care system. If you are looking for the per diem then you can do foster care but there is no certainty that they will be placed w/you since they will be wards of the state and then it's the CW's choice where they go.
AJ
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