[ncarol01]

Originally Posted by anilorak13ska

ncarol01 - Hello, and welcome! It is true that foster care sounds like a tough road, but isn't any road you take towards parenthood? Look at the road it took to get your DD!

The wait cannot be predicted. It depends on the need in your area. Having said that, here's a trick that we used that apparently worked: After over 2 months of waiting for a placement (after getting licensed), we attended the orientation at the next county over. At first, we were told we didn't need to be there bc we couldn't be licensed in two places. But then we said, look, we're bilingual and open to newborns as well as Hispanic and multiracial kids. Within 2 weeks the new county had called us, but for two days I couldn't get back in touch with them.

Lo and behold, they must have called our current county to inquire about transferring our license. Two days after the new county called us, our current county called us with two possible placements. One was a straight fostering situation of a 6 mo girl, and the other was a fost-adopt situation of 2 sibs, a 2.5 yo girl and her 4 mo brother.

Believe it or not, even though we want to adopt, and even though we'd have sealed the deal with "one of each - a boy and a girl", we decided that a straight fostering situation was a better fit for us right now.

We've had our FD for 12 days now, and we are convinced that we were crazy to think that we can handle a newborn! We're committed to Baby V for however long she is with us (and just in case this turns out to be the case, we would adopt her), but if/when she is RUed, we want to take only one child over the age of 1 year.

I have also started to ponder the idea of an older child. Several months ago, we inquired about some 20 preschoolers on foster care photolistings, but we were not chosen for any of them.

Speaking of which, surveying state/county photolistings may be the way for you to go if you want to adopt w/o the risk of foster care, but with the low expense of adopting from foster care. The only thing you haven't mentioned is the age range of the child you are hoping for. And yes, some special needs are to be expected, but I think a lot of them are listed as special needs in order to qualify for services. Various things that are considered special needs may not be a big deal to you and your family.

Things like the child's ethnicity, age, and size of siblings are considered special needs. So are learning disabilities and developmental delays (which is super general, imho). And it doesn't hurt to inquire and once you have more info about a particular child, research the situation/condition to see if it is something you can handle.

(Btw, just yesterday our county called us again to see if we were interested in taking in a teen and her baby as a respite placement for the weekend. So I'm telling you, we're on the radar now!)

Good luck!


Everyone - is anyone here waiting to be matched for an adoptive placement, but you've already had a foster placement in the past?

Thanks for your reply and all the information that you shared with me. It is so good to hear other opinions and what they are doing. We are looking to adopt in the age range of 0-5, boy or girl (doesn't matter), possibly a sibling group (but no more than 2), and we will accept mild to moderate issues. I have thought about just using the state's site and try to find a child already free to adopt. It just seems like there's not many available in the younger age group that we'd like. Do you know how difficult it is to adopt from other state's foster care? I would think that the younger ones would go fast in any state so it would be unlikely for me to have much success with that.

Thanks again for all your info!!!

Carol

[anilorak13ska]

Hi Carol, Your criteria sound pretty wide to me! (You don't mention ethnicity of child you'd consider) While it's true that kids this age are often adopted within their own state, this isn't always the case. You can always inquire about kids in other states and they will sometimes tell you the child is not available for out of state due to needing to maintain bith family or foster family contact, but if there's no contact to be maintained, I don't think they necessarily look at the state, just the best matched family for the child.

We have had the same three or four kids listed in our state's photolisting for at least 6 months, and one or two of them have since been adopted but they're still up. So we are heavily depending on other states' photolistings.

Having said that, even adoptuskids.com, which lists kids from all states available for adoption into any state, sometimes goof up. We first started inquiring about older kids (ie. preschoolers) when we found a set of brothers on there. After getting more info on them, talking on the phone with the CW, and having our HS submitted, they THEN say that they won't place them out of state! We were so shocked and hurt - why put them on the interstate listing?! But flukes exist.

I have a list of photolistings for various states/counties (some in need of being updated) if you're interested, PM me and I'd be happy to send it to you.

Other than adopting directly from a photolisting, perhaps you can consider fost-adopting with the explanation to your dd that the child is just visiting? If they end up staying, great, but if not, your dd knew it was coming. I don't know first hand how I'd handle having a child in the home already. My experience is with our 4.5 yo niece, who knows we have a baby in the house and looks forward to seeing her, but she isn't with her 24/7 so it won't be so hard to see her go.

I also have a disable father, who reasons at a child's level, and he is loving being a granddaddy to our FD (my mom watches her while I'm at work), but is aware that she's not here to stay and asks periodically how much longer we have her. I know he'll be sad when she goes, but he knows she's here temporarily.

Either way, I wouldn't expect the process to go very quickly, at least it has been super slow for us. But short of spending a fortune on a priavate agency adoption, that's what we're looking at, eh?