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I'm so sorry to hear about the death of your daughter. My thoughts and prayers are with you and yoru family.
I am with a private agency and I love it. The support they give me is outstanding. If I had to rely solely on the county for support, I would have went bananas.
I love my agency so much that as soon as I finalize my daughter's adoption, I'm going to sign up and become a mentor for my agency to help families who are new to the system or having difficulties.
My experience with a private agency is they can be selective unlike the county. I never had any problems fost/adopting or fostering babies. My youngest baby came home at 5-days-old and my oldest, at my request, came home at 6 1/2 months. I've had four kids in my home, one I picked up from the hospital, which was a great experience.
My international adoption SW told me it was harder to adopt from foster care and domestically than it was internationally, which sort of frightened me. But I understand what he means, technically when doing foster care your home is open 24 hours a day and you have to follow all of the safety rules, ie anything sharper than a butter knife is locked up, the medicine cabinet being kept locked, covers in all outlets, etc.., and other requirements that your agency might have.
The hoops you have to jump through are not difficult, just sort of tedious and annoying. It's like busywork, which is how I found the classes you have to take.
I have heard another homeschool mom say the same thing about being closely scrutinized, but I honestly believe it sort of depends on the CW who gets assigned to your case, and whomever does your homestudy.
I do know that you can NOT use your IA homestudy for fost/adopt.
IA was a walk in the park compared to fost/adopt. My new thoughts on fost/adopt is its like riding a rollercoaster with a blindfold on, never knowing when the ride will end, or what the layout of the rollercoaster is, and sometimes it also means someone is popping in and out of your ride on the cart giving you sometimes accurate, sometimes inaccurate information on just what is happening, what is going to happen, and when the ride will be over.
This is not for the faint of heart. But if you're feeling led to do this, jump in with both feet and remember you're doing this for a child who so desperately needs for someone to fight for them and love them.
Also the length of your journey can be long or short, it all depends on how quickly you do your paperwork, take the required classes, how quickly the paperwork is being processed, how quickly the fingerprints come back, how fast a homestudy can be done, how fast your agency is working, and what your dreamed child should be like.
Best of luck!
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