[ericsmom98]

We just got our license last week. We are licensed with the county agency. We hope to adopt two older children 7-15 and we would like to do emergency care for age 2 and under.

[hubbyswife]

w are w the county agency, hoping to adopt 6 and under and we do foster care for 6 and under....

[kaylasmom]

We were licensed through our county, we do foster care for 4 and under, I have 4 right now, and I do emergancy care also. I do the emergancy care to get me use to giving a child back....LOL, nothing gets you used to that.

[tnajk]

We are with a CPA (Private Agency) We only take 0-18 months. I was worried at first because our age group is babies and we heard all the babies were placed in open County homes and that we wouldn't get very many.

Well, we are on Baby #5 (Since getting licensed in September '04) and still going strong. We actually have 2 babies right now! I simply couldn't say no when they begged us to take another one.

There are Babies coming out of the States ears!

[jackiesbooks]

This is probably a stupid ?, but how does a private agency work? Are the children placed there by the county agency or by the birth parents?
Were the children removed?

[missw005]

When I started out for JUST adoption over 10 years ago I was licensed for adoption through a private agency. The county said they didn't have the time to do adoptive homestudies. But then a couple years later, Crisis Nursery joined with my agency to license adoptive homes as emergency placement and respite foster homes - so then I had both licenses. A few years later I moved back home - and neither my private or foster agency would work with me living so far away......so I transferred my adoptive homestudy to a local private adoption agency (who was contracted by the state to do special needs/waiting child adoptions) and my foster care license to my new county foster care office.
I have NEVER gotten a foster placement with my adoption agency but know they have them as my friend got her baby from a foster home run by my adoptive agency. I do get foster/emergency/respite placements from my county but have NEVER been offered a child for adoption.
Make sense?
(LOL) No, me either. However, it's the way of the world up here in the sticks.

Kaylasmom- I did crisis care for experience and it DID help me with detaching enough so it wouldn't hurt so bad to give the kids back. It's more of protecting your heart than anything.

If I may ask, tjnak, what state are you from?

Sandy

[tnajk]

Most (but not all) CPA's around here are Adoption Agencies. For example: Bethany Christian Family Services...They do private domestic and international adoptions. They also contract with the counties to take Foster Children. When the county foster homes are full, they begin calling CPAs to place the child. All of the children we recieve are the same as if we were licensed through the county. Most were removed from the home.

The benefit of being with a CPA is we have extra support, a lot better pay and several different counties calling instead of just one!

I live in Colorado.

[gclvaruba]

Originally Posted by jackiesbooks

This is probably a stupid ?, but how does a private agency work? Are the children placed there by the county agency or by the birth parents?
Were the children removed?

In our state, everything goes through county DFCS. Our county removes the child, and then works with their own "in county" families first and then if need be, goes out of county for foster homes.

For adoption, again it is through the county. We originally had our homestudy done by a private agency who had a state contract. They took care of writing up our study and training. Once complete, they were the go between between us and the county CW for the teenager we had identified. When we disrupted placement, all new inquiries we made had to be through our agency, they then had to forward our homestudy to whoever we had requested.

Fortunate for us, the private agency did not have their state contract renewed. Given the choice, we asked that our homestudy be transferred to our home county. This was the best thing to happen to us. We literally cut out the "middleman". Upon their receipt, we had one home visit from our new caseworker and were almost immediately identified for a foster to adopt sibling group. It fell through due to guardianship issues, however the same day we were approached about an 8 yo.

DD was brought to our home two days later and that was last September...still awaiting TPR but soon we will be there too! It breaks my heart reading all of these posts here the last few weeks about folks who are having troubles getting kids. Our adoption CW (as opposed to our old foster CW) has 30 children to find homes for. She has already offered us an infant (which I know many of you are waiting longly for), but our dd is special needs and enough for us to handle right now. I don't know the child's status, but this week there was legal ad in the paper for termination on a 3 yo female.

[jackiesbooks]

where are you?