[tlc4you2]

Hello my name is Tonya Chandler and my husband and I wish to adopt a loving child , however we do not have any children together . Someone suggested that I become a foster parent first to see if I am ready to be up to the task of parenthood , I do not know the first thing about becoming a foster parent or who to contact . We are located in Illinois and I cannot wait to have children running around in my home . Can anyone help me and if so please let me know.

Tonya

[AmyAnne]

Are you fostering to see if you want to adopt? Or to see if you want biological children? If it's the latter, I'd say that's the wrong reason! Foster and bio kids are completely different.

But I wish you luck. FParenting/adopting through foster care is challenging but the rewards are worth it

[hmgbird]

I don't know if you will find a 'loving' child . Most children I know, bio or not, are challenging 99.99% of the time and loving .01% of the time.

However, knowing that, if you want to be parents and think you can deal with the fact that some kids that you foster WILL return to parents or extended family and you might get lucky enough to find your forever child through this route, then I would start investigating avenues.

In my state, you have to be foster approved to adopt anyway. We started out to foster and when we found out we could also adopt through the same process, now we're investigating that. If our fd doesn't become adoptable we will probably start looking through the state's book of adoptable children. But we're hopeful, based on the caseworker's, guardian ad litem's, and counselor's assessment. And this is only our first long-term placement.

Call your local Department of Social/Human Services department. If you have a good phone book, you should be able to find them in government section or in the front white pages.