[MilehighDad]

Greenmama,
Somehow I missed where you had posted that you are going to pass on this child. You are correct to carefully consider any placement decision and pass if it doesn't feel right. I certainly respect your decision and pray that you will find a match that works soon.

I also want to address the tone this thread has taken. I know that everyone posting on this board who has adopted older kids has more in common with our family than anyone else in the country. I know from personal experience how hard it is, and I can say that our oldest daughter packed her bags to move in with us from a group home. However, I will say that I think it is unreasonable to take insufficient information and create a firestorm to blast a new family with. Very little was said about the 9-year old discussed on this forum, yet many people were comfortable with thinking they knew more than the social workers who have been responsible for the child for years and who made the match.

Finally, kids who are truly a danger to themselves or others are not put in group homes, they are locked up in psychiatric wards at children's hospitals. And, I can tell you from personal experience, it takes very, very little for a foster home to get a child sent to a psychiatric hospital. They won't be released from such a ward until they're drugged into a stupor. From there, the child will be sent to a residential treatment facility before being returned to a group home and finally back to a foster home. That's the kind of kids we have taken on, and the main thing that should be remembered is that they're just kids and they deserve a home too.