[jamie3]

When we decided to become involved in a child's life, we felt that we would rather adopt from foster care rather than foster. Neither dh or I feel that we are able to handle the revolving door of foster care.

Has anyone decided to adopt, but changed to foster care? What are your experiences? I know every situation is different. I just love hearing foster/adoption stories.

Thanks,
Jamie

[glk]

We also wanted to adopt from the foster care system, but without being foster parents. After waiting several years to get a homestudy (things are different now, this was 13+ years ago!) we finally decided to become foster parents just to get a foot in the door. Our second placement was a 6 year old boy who was available for adoption and we did adopt him. In the years since we have provided foster care off and on, depending on how our son was doing - when he was about 12 we really started struggling with him and his behaviors so we stopped providing foster care all togther until 2 years ago.

At that time our favorite sw called with a sibling group she needed an experienced, short-term home for. We had them four months before they went home; our next placement was a 3 month old baby, 'for two weeks', we are now adopting him and his 2 older siblings. The adoption should be final by the end of August. We are not planning to do foster care for several years now, in order to give these three the best chance we can give them.

I don't believe we'd have ever had any of these four children if we hadn't become foster parents so I highly recommend getting licensed. Yes, it is hard when children you love leave but it is a pain that can be overcome. Good luck, whichever way your decision goes.

[LotAkids]

Our situation was a bit different. We only wanted to adopt. We were asked if we would take a legal risk placement of a 7 month old boy. We said yes, not really knowing what that meant.
We had to become licensed as foster parents and are still considered that even though we are planning to adopt him after his birthparents termination in September. We are hoping for a November finalization.
It has been much more difficult then we ever thought it would. Not knowing from one day to another if he would be taken from us at any moment and given back to his biological mother. (who has mental health issues galore)
We are more settled now, but we still hold our breathe every time the phone rings.
We will adopt again after his finalization. But we don't want to foster. We won't do another legal risk, I don't think, either.

[MissyCat]

Liz ~ what does it mean legal risk? I am currently a foster parent and don't even know the meaning of that.

We are foster parents (on our third child) moving towards adopting her...

Thanks for the info.

Missy

[LotAkids]

Missy-
Our son was not yet legally free for adoption when they placed him with us. The goal was to move towards adoption, so he wouldn't be moved again, but it wasn't yet set in stone. We are technically considered foster parents until termination, when he becomes legally free, then we'll move on towards adoption. We were only looking to adopt. Because he wasn't yet terminated, he was considered "a legal risk". Meaning the county's intentions was to terminate, but it hadn't been done yet. What a rollercoaster it has been! Our court date is set for September 10th, but until then, you never know.........

[jhenrie]

Well, DH & I are one of those couples that originally intended to adopt special needs children, but now we are leaning almost entirely toward fostering. We are still able to conceive children & have a 6 y.o. biological son, but we (for many reasons) wanted an older child to raise, nurture, etc. We spent probably 1 1/2 years researching...before even doing our homestudy.

The event that finally propelled us to do our homestudy was a girl we found on a photolisting out of state. She had major behavioral & emotional issues stemming from RAD, but we researched RAD all we could. We knew we were in for a rocky ride, but we were ready to forgo affection & such, in order to give this child stability & love. We went through the emotional highs & lows of the homestudy, & when it was finally complete, our worker contacted H's worker. Her worker simply said that (although this child had been posted for several months) she thought she might have been hasty in posting her. H's therapist opted to send her to a group home, rather than even looking at any homestudies. This was undescribably devastating to us & our family.

But with our heads hung, we decided to "buck up" & begin looking at other children. We have literally read hundreds of profiles. Our criteria is very loose, as well. But....we just haven't been able to make it happen for us. We have read about all of the antidiscrimination laws, but it seems that doesn't stop it from happening. For child "A-F" we couldn't adopt because they preferred to keep them in their current state. For children "G-O", we couldn't adopt because they needed more strong cultural identification than "our culture" could give them. For children "P-Z", we just couldn't get responses from caseworkers. We've been totally dismayed at the process, when it seems that the adoption fairs, photolistings, & newsletters are begging people to adopt special needs children.

Aside from that, we ran into another snag (which I won't go into detail about, because I've posted it on other threads) concerning a lack of info & cooperation from our worker.

We were at a loss. When we called the Foster Care Foundation about taking adoptive parent classes, the recruiter obviously was trying to convince us to check into fostering.

Well, we accepted the packet he sent & read it with conviction. We have read every word & period of their website & have done a ton more research. We think we're going to do it. At this point, we feel kind of "bruised" (for the lack of a better word), so we're not even thinking or hoping for adopting our future placements. We'll foster. We'll do our best. And, if it just so happens that the TPR occurs, then we'll work towards adopting.

We're nervous & scared, but excited & filled with anticipation. We're starting to think sleeping arrangements, furniture, toys & a playroom, clothes, etc. It's all a bit overwhelming (much of that in a good way), but we just hope to be the kind of great foster parents that make a enough of a difference that those kids remember us for the rest of their lives.

[Gryph]

We have been fostering for years but are now looking into adoption. Too many times things went bad when we didn't have a legal say with our mostly long term teenage boys. We decided that we wanted a legal standing with children we raise in our home.