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Originally Posted by kimyas
Last time I called DYFS they told me I needed to accept an 8 yr old to adopt.
Ocean County NJ
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Kim, something is not right here in Ocean County, because it took them 11 weeks and 3 messages (one email, two by phone) before they responded to our inquiries about training classes, and then they were very discouraging (Oh, there's no babies available...Are you SURE you want to do this? Maybe you'd better think this over for a while...). Um, yeah, Honey, I think we've had PLENTY of time to think this over, and by the way, we're already signed up for the classes with Just Babies, who have been nothing but supportive and encouraging...
Since we were licensed 18 months ago, we have been offered no less than 3 other fost/adopt infants (one by DYFS and 2 via the "fostermommy network"), but our special needs toddler (pre-identified fost/adopt, now our daughter forever) needs all of our attention.
No babies available? I don't buy it. True, there are fewer here in Ocean than in Essex, and now that they're doing that "place within the Catchement" thing, there are fewer still, but come on. It is true that you will almost never come across an infant that is free for adoption, because the whole legal process usually takes more than a year. You would really boost your chances for fost/adopting an infant if you widened your parameters to include all races and mixed race heritage. If you narrow the parameters to only caucasion, and already TPR'ed (freed for adoption) but not in a permanent placement yet, ie "Adopt only", you may well be looking at only school-aged children and teens.