[mamannie]

My dh and I are trying to decide if foster to adopt is the path we should take. A little background info... We have 3 biological children of our own, but have always wanted to adopt as well. We want ot adopt a boy under the age of 18 months. Our main intent of fostering would be in the hopes of adopting. As a foster parent, are you able to set the criteria of the child(ren) you will accept into your home? In your experiences, are there many children under the age of 18 months in the foster care system who aren't part of a sibling group? Thanks for your help!

AJ

[stevenstwin]

Yes, you can definitely set the criteria. you can also request only children who are a low legal risk (that means unlikely to go home). That said, there AREN'T a whole lot of children in that age range available, particularly not as part of a sibling group. There ARE people here who got young ones - even newborns, but in general I don't think it is terribly common. I think with a lot of the younger ones, the system is still trying to help the parents and reunify the families (unless of course you are looking at the younger sibling of a child or sibling group that has already had parental rights terminated - that can happen). WORST case scenarion on the reunion thing...my foster son came to us at the age of 14. He was first apprehended when he was 18 months old, and has been in and out of foster care ever since - 15 placements in 14 years and always back to the bios. Talk about a severe failure to realize that reunion was NOT going to work, and these bios were never going to change! Anyway, I think the best thing you can do is talk to the social workers in your county, since there seems to be a lot of variation between areas.

[twinflana]

I foster the ages of 0-3 and am on my fifth placement in 2 months and every one came without siblings so yes it does happen. The 1st was a newborn that I had for 2 months and I knew from the beginning that the parents were being TPR'd and that the cousin was adopting her. The second had a brother and a sister but they had been in the foster system and placed with relatives prior to her being born. The third has like 8 half brothers and sisters and all of them are either with relatives or been adopted prior to him being born. So as you can see it is possible to get a single child placed with you. However, there is no guarantee that you will get to keep them. The 2 year old I have now has been in care for 19 months and he should be TPR'd soon but still no guarantee. By the way he has 11 half siblings 8 placed with relatives in a far away state and 3 placed with their father. (Not his father)

[vbandsf]

How old are your kids? That would be a big factor to me - even an 18 month old could have a big effect on how your other children develop by his/her behavior.

In my area, it takes a LONG time to get an infant/toddler unless you're willing to take a drug affected or FAS child.

[mj77]

We have 2 boys. One placed at 13 mo. the other at 5 mo. We were offered MANY BOYS. For some reason, girls seem so rare here... Anyway, my understanding is that most children are removed nowdays for drugs somehow being involved whether they be living in a home where drugs are a problem or they were exposed. Both my boys were exposed to meth. One was exposed to cocaine too and we're unsure about alcohol in both cases. There are quirky challenges with both our kids, but the issues are workable fortunately. If they weren't--we love them regardless. They are both beautiful and precious. The more we read up on issues, the less fearful we were about some of them. We discovered there were things we just weren't willing to take on, and things we could deal with that we didn't think we could before.

Whether there are babies available depends on where you live. Our state, babies seem easier to get (under 2ish) than other states. OR recruits families sometimes from other states because we have a shortage of families here (at least we did last I heard).

Best to you!
MJ

[fostadoptblog]

We got an infant newborn girl, (30 days old) that we FINALLY got to adopt after one year. The had 9 other legal risk children = but we knew only a few of those had a real possibility of aodption, we could have said no but chose not to.

It depends what county/state you are in. It various a lot from place to place.