[Faith54]

Alot of things depend on your state. We started the process in July and they are expecting it to take a year to get licensed because of all the budget cuts.

[DannieAS]

I only have a minute, so didn't look at what state/county you're in, but also something to look at is what do they consider fost/adopt....

In my county all kids are legal risk because they don't terminate parental rights until a child is in their adoptive home....so while I'm an adoptive home only....I would get a placement of a child that has a date for termination of parent rights...which means it's still a risk...we rarely have legally free children unless there was a disruption of a placement and the parental rights were already terminated.

[cottonlily]

I agree with the pp who said your wait time could be 3-4 years. You're wanting what almost every adopting parent wants - a caucasion female under the age of 3. If that's really the only child you feel you can parent, if you're approved and patient you will be picked as the right family for some little girl, eventually. The key word being eventually. The average age of a child in foster care is 10. There are lots and lots of prospective parents wanting just what you want. Then you add parents who adopt foster children through private agencies (those getting paid to find that "perfect" child) and the competition thickens. Children under 5 without severe disabilities do not remain in care very long.

We just completed training and the instructor opened my eyes to something. Everyone (I should say most everyone) wants the babies. However, you are taking a pretty big risk with a baby. Do you know what drugs the mother used while pregnant? Maybe, maybe not. Do you know if the child will have learning disabilities? Possibly, if they are a bit older infant. Do you know if they have a genetic disorder? Probably not, as most show up later in childhood. People think adopting babies is "easier" but it comes with so many risks. The instructor said almost every infant adopted is labled "special needs" because while they may not exhibit signs of problems at the time, they are at risk for all problems.

I mention all this because you seem to be concerned about wait time and you want a baby. It could be an issue if you accept the first child who falls in your preferred age range, considering they could very well have some type of problem and you already have 3 little ones to care for. That would be far too much on my plate!

eta To answer your question about asking for what you want: On our application there was a section for us to fill in our race and ethnicity. However, with our application and at orientation and at training they discussed (and handing out pamphlets) about this. They are prohibited by law from attempting to place or not place a child with you based on race. Of course you can refuse a placement based on what you want. But there was no where on the application to select preferred race of the child. Years ago workers were trying to place white children with white families, black children with black families, so on, and due to their race good families were being denied children who just remained longer in care.

[mbarilla]

Thanks everyone...I had my first meeting with DCF today. It was very informative and we are very excited! There is not foster to adopt her in CT...only foster or only adopt. So we will start off straight adopt and then if we don't get many calls, we will change to foster. Since there is such a shortage of people here...they are offering more Pride classes and more times a week so you can get done in 5 weeks versus 10...pretty cool. I'll keep ya all posted.
Miranda

[hrisme]

The joys of internet lingo....

Typically the initial "D" (DH, DD, DS, etc) stands for dear, unless your two year old DS just threw the cell phone in the toilet, in which case it stands for darn!

[anilorak13ska]

Hello there! I wanted to chime in with my experience. We are in VA. We were licensed in July. We were definitely "encouraged" to take older kids. But that may be bc we went through the teen training bc it was offered sooner. I got impatient after 2 months and attended the neighboring county's orientation and asked to have our license transferred. Two weeks EXACTLY, we brought home our foster daughter! (the squeeky wheel...)

Our parameters have shifted since then. The number of kids went down from two to one (we have just the one little girl, and we can't imagine being able to split our time and energy between two). The age of the child went up. We spent a year pursuing independent domestic adoption of a newborn. Two failed matches later, we were ready to sign with an adoption agency, but wanted to leave no stone unturned before we forked over the money. Then our FD came to us. She's 7 months old, and while we absolutely adore her, we now see that we're not the greatest baby people. I for one cannot handle not being able to communicate with her when she screams bloody murder at the top of her lungs and I've already tried everything (she's our little diva!), and if it weren't for DH taking the night shift, I don't know if I could handle the days! So, we decided to abandon the newborn adoption idea all together, actually passing on two otherwise wonderful soon-to-be-born leads in order to wait it out and adopt from foster care.

In our area, they do concurrent planning, which means every family they license is simultaneously fost/adopt. It's up to us to say yes or no to a straight foster or adopt-only situation. When we got the call about Baby V, we were given a choice: she's a straight foster; the other was a fost-to-adopt sibling pair of a 2.5 yo girl and 4 mo boy. Believe it or not, we chose the fostering over the guaranteed instant family, and it's a good thing we did! We would've been in over our heads with the other two kids, if for no other reason than that there were two of them!

So having fostered Baby V (she's still with us, week 4, not sure how long we'll have her, but we expect her to RU) has allowed us to see that we are called to adopt a toddler or preschooler - minimum ~18 months, maximum 5 years (if not in school yet).

Being able to fost/adopt also allows us to be a bit more flexible in terms of ethnicity. I'm CC, DH is Latino. We've always wanted a Hispanic child (Baby V is Latina), so for a straight adoption situation, we'll take a child that's Hispanic or half Hispanic and half any other race.

But for fostering, we'll take a child of any race. Our reasoning is that if we're fostering a child and they become available for adoption, if we had grown attached to them, race won't matter. But we can't make that assumption in advance, not knowing how we'll be at parenting an Asian or Black child. for instance. (Just like we really didn't know how we'd be at parenting a baby until we were given the opportunity with Baby V).

And while for some reason 99% of all of our adoption leads have been for boys, and we have a stronger pull towards the idea of a son, we will adopt either sex, even though at this time, we think it may be our only child.

Will it be difficult to see Baby V go home? Of course! I've already cried about it when I think of it. But fostering is not about us; it's about a family in need. We met Baby V's parents last week, and thanks to that experience, we see our part in the bigger picture. I try to encourage myself with this quote: "It is better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all."

[mbarilla]

Thanks for the info....good luck everyone!

[Dawn25]

You could be waiting a looooong time.

We've been approved to adopt since July and have had no matches yet. We are looking for a girl, of any race, with mild medical/emotional needs and under the age of eight. We recently met with a adoption matching specialist and she told us finding what we're looking for will be close to winning the lottery. They said our wait time could be as long as 3 years. Everyone else wants what we're looking for too. Its extremely competitive. Unfortunately the type of child you're looking for rarely exists, and if she does exist, theres hundreds of other familys out there submitting for her as well. It sucks. We recently submitted for a 5 year old African American girl from MI and she had over 200 other families submit for her as well. Then the foster parents ended up choosing to adopt her, since they always get first dibs, thats usually what happens; especially if they are young and white with no issues.

We thought for sure we'd get some matches by now, especially since we already have a son that is African American. We're open to pretty much to anything, but no luck so far.

Good luck to you anyways - I hope your match is a quick one because waiting is NOT fun!!!

[mbarilla]

Thanks for the advice. We plan on waiting a while so it's not a big deal. We currently have a 2, 6, and 8 year old sons...so waiting a while is not a problem seeing that it would be nice for our 2 yr old to be a few years older.