[jhenrie]

Well, DH & I are one of those couples that originally intended to adopt special needs children, but now we are leaning almost entirely toward fostering. We are still able to conceive children & have a 6 y.o. biological son, but we (for many reasons) wanted an older child to raise, nurture, etc. We spent probably 1 1/2 years researching...before even doing our homestudy.

The event that finally propelled us to do our homestudy was a girl we found on a photolisting out of state. She had major behavioral & emotional issues stemming from RAD, but we researched RAD all we could. We knew we were in for a rocky ride, but we were ready to forgo affection & such, in order to give this child stability & love. We went through the emotional highs & lows of the homestudy, & when it was finally complete, our worker contacted H's worker. Her worker simply said that (although this child had been posted for several months) she thought she might have been hasty in posting her. H's therapist opted to send her to a group home, rather than even looking at any homestudies. This was undescribably devastating to us & our family.

But with our heads hung, we decided to "buck up" & begin looking at other children. We have literally read hundreds of profiles. Our criteria is very loose, as well. But....we just haven't been able to make it happen for us. We have read about all of the antidiscrimination laws, but it seems that doesn't stop it from happening. For child "A-F" we couldn't adopt because they preferred to keep them in their current state. For children "G-O", we couldn't adopt because they needed more strong cultural identification than "our culture" could give them. For children "P-Z", we just couldn't get responses from caseworkers. We've been totally dismayed at the process, when it seems that the adoption fairs, photolistings, & newsletters are begging people to adopt special needs children.

Aside from that, we ran into another snag (which I won't go into detail about, because I've posted it on other threads) concerning a lack of info & cooperation from our worker.

We were at a loss. When we called the Foster Care Foundation about taking adoptive parent classes, the recruiter obviously was trying to convince us to check into fostering.

Well, we accepted the packet he sent & read it with conviction. We have read every word & period of their website & have done a ton more research. We think we're going to do it. At this point, we feel kind of "bruised" (for the lack of a better word), so we're not even thinking or hoping for adopting our future placements. We'll foster. We'll do our best. And, if it just so happens that the TPR occurs, then we'll work towards adopting.

We're nervous & scared, but excited & filled with anticipation. We're starting to think sleeping arrangements, furniture, toys & a playroom, clothes, etc. It's all a bit overwhelming (much of that in a good way), but we just hope to be the kind of great foster parents that make a enough of a difference that those kids remember us for the rest of their lives.