[hkolln]

I'm sure some on here have heard my long story so I won't get into it again...but we are relatives raising our niece whom was in foster care for 11 months in another state. As soon as we found out she was in foster care we immediately got involved (6 wks into it) however DCF did not notify the foster family til 7 months later that we were interested (after we were completely licensed as foster parents). I hear alot of relatives coming out of the woodwork and it's sad. I think kids need permanency, either with family or a foster family that will be their family.

Our ICPC is still being worked on for her adoption...and she's been with us now 11 months! So in total it's now at the 22 month mark since we have been involved in the case. ICPC's can take along time and sometimes DCF does not notify the foster families that relatives are interested. It's sad, but it's true.

We are leaving on June 7th to fly to Idaho to visit the previous foster family for 4 days and then we're going to visit relatives. We know our niece needs to know it's ok to love multiple people and we want the previous foster family to be in her life as much as we can. It's hard since we're in FL and they are in ID but we will try our best.

I can still remember sitting in our nieces therapists office in Idaho along with the FM and the FM started crying saying "We love her" and me not knowing what to say to her. Only thing I could think of was "Thank you for taking such great care of our niece. We know you love her and we know she loves you." And from then on we promised we wouldn't cut them out of our niece's life. It was hard in the beginning for them to let go but I understood.

I just hope they realize we are not the mean, spiteful relatives that came out of the woodwork. I know it probably does look that way sometimes.