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I have a friend who did foster care in another state. She wasn't looking to adopt, but its interesting to note that in the 4 years they fostered children (over 20 children), NOT ONE of the children in their home became available for adoption. Every single one went home to their birthparents.
Then they stopped providing foster care and moved to my state. A year or so later they were telephoned because one of the children, now 7 years old, who they had off and on as a foster child, was back in care and probably going to be put on the adoption track. Were they interested? A year later they were able to adopt her.
Now they want to expand their family some more, and have enrolled in our state's foster-adopt program, for a child or children age 0-3. They're on their 5th or 6th placement of "of course he/she will become adoptable" in less than a year - all previous infants have been returned to biological family in spite of the social workers' assurances that they wouldn't be. They've had their current sibling group of infant and toddler for several months, and still don't know what the outcome will be for those two.
Doing foster care is a completely different mindset than adopting. If you can have two ways of thinking, two plans for the future, two alternate outcomes, etc in your head at all times and not be affected by it, then this may be the way you want to go. If you can't, if it would absolutely destroy you to say goodbye to a child you'd known several months or even a year, then it isn't the way you want to go.
It's the way my husband and I are going, but I know it will be hard. We're of the mindset that we want to provide foster care to children who need it, who will eventually be returned to their families. In the case of a child in our home who cannot return to his birth family, we will happily adopt that child. It's a mindset that's completely backwards from the way most wanna-be adoptive parents think, isn't it? But it will save us a lot of heartache.
It's a hard decision--think it through well!
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