[Howdy]

Are you sure your sil isn't keeping information from you? It seems very strange to me that she wouldn't know anything until a letter about a goodbye visit. My two foster kids haven't been infants, but although I never attended one, it seemed that every month there was some sort of court date for DHS to update the judge and the parents (if they showed up, or their lawyer) to tell their status/give their side/etc.

The first foster child I had (a 7 yr old) was in foster care almost a year and then was moved to me as a legal risk adoption placement. At the court date when DHS was going to ask for termination of parental rights, it turned out her dad had gotten out of prison early, found a job as fast as he could, and had a lawyer there. So DHS didn't ask for termination, and the dad's family had to get a homestudy which took a couple months, then they got custody. She had not seen him since she was an infant, so it wasn't like he had a lot of relationship with her, it was enough that he was the bio-father.

My second (current) foster child has parents who just aren't meeting their caseplan. I don't know if the relatives needed written permission but the caseworker contacted them that the child is going to be adoptable (most likely will be) and now they are getting homestudy approved and I have to let this child go too (she was placed with me as a legal risk adoption).

You'd probably need to be interested in actually adopting the child yourself, the law about a permanent home by the end of a year is so the child won't be bounced around and psychologically damaged by that. It wouldn't be good for a child to be just temporarily in a home waiting for their bmom to get on their feet, because that can take years. And I believe infants are more easily damaged by changes in 'parents' than older kids. Moving from the foster home to you would be a hard thing on the baby, and then to move again to the bmom later on would add more damage.

It might be that if you adopted the child you would not be allowed to have any contact anymore with your sister. My current fd is going to relatives and they are not allowed to even get phone calls from their son/brother without it being scheduled and monitored by DHS. They had to agree to that to be considered as a placement.

The one year limit seems very short for an adult to get a child back, but one year is a large percentage of a child's childhood.