[hrisme]

I know I've seen a few posts from individuals here who do foster care & also have child care in their homes. I'm interested in hearing about others experiences with this. Here they will absolutely not let you do both foster care & child care, but they will allow you to do a part-time preschool program. I talked to someone today who said he thought he could get me a variance for respite-only while I am licensed for child care. While I don't officially do child care (I run a preschool session mornings & a pre-k/kinder session afternoons) I am licensed for it, as there is no separate license available for preschool only & it qualifies me for several grants.

I am wondering how those of you who have done this manage. Does it bother your child care clients when you have a child with behavioral disorders? Do you tell the clients straight out that you do foster care? Or that the children you have in your home may have special needs? How do you ensure the safety of your child care clients if you have a child with emotional or behavioral problems in your care?

I did initially begin my child care program with the intent of integrating special needs & typically developing children, and I didn't have any major problems, so I'm not going into this blind. I know what can happen with behavioral kids & I want to make sure everyone in my program is prepared and make sure everyone stays safe, physically and emotionally.

[jbee]

we do child care, we aren't licensed or anything though. dh and i can have 3 unrelated to us kids apiece and still not have to get the childcare license. our agency knows and hasn't said anything. they just care that we have a 'job' and some extra income to put down on our homestudy. i think they actually like us having two full time parents home for the fc.
we have 3 kids of our own and 2 teenage fs. we tell the parents we do foster care and that our agency wouldn't knowingly put kids with us that would harm our own children. on our daycare website i mention we are involved in foster care. at interview i tell them we have two older boys who aren't usually here anyway (they are at school through the year and work eves usually) most of them have never even seen my boys.
no one has had a problem with it. the boys are behaved and don't have major issues, cause we don't take kids like that anyway because of our little ones. one of our fs has clearances b/c when we adopted our youngest from fc anyone over 14 in the house had to have them. we got the other fs afterwards.
if we were to get another child that required more attention i would probably just reduce the number of daycare kids i had, because our stipend would even it out anyway. we are anticipating adding another child after we get our addition finished. but again we don't take any major problems anyway.
i know different states have different rules, both for the childcare license and fc license. i belong to a childcare forum and i know some ladies on there can't do foster b/c they have the childcare license,and some places your bios and fkids count in your daycare numbers so you can't have enough dc kids to make it financially feasible to do both.
this is my experience, here in pa.

[wannafostersoon]

I was refused an invitation to the informational meeting this time last year because I was doing child care.

[Sam-N-Tony]

I was thinking of opening my own home based daycare as well so that I may stay at home with my fkids and still have income. Where I am, we are allowed a total of 5 kids in our house, which includes bio, foster and daycare kids. So right now, I have 1 bio and 2 foster, which means I would only be allowed to take on 2 other kids. So check with your local foster licensing agency because they have there own requirements seperate from the county/state licensing agency.

I have a call into the agency that pays for child care in our county. If they would pay me as a daycare provider for my foster kids, then I would be okay. So you just need to check into it.

[Biblemom]

In Ky I can not be a licensed daycare provider, but can watch 3 children unrelated to me. I do this only for teachers which makes it nice to be off in the summers. All the parents were aware of my being a foster parent before their children started with me. It has not been a problem for us. I watch children that are around the same ages as my bio/foster children so they all enjoy being around each other. I do not watch babies since I foster and you just never know what type of behaviors will come out sometimes...

[meshsgrl]

my friend has 1 bio, 6 adopted and 1 fs. She had to get waivers to have that many kids in the house. She was my babysitter (when I still had a job). We are with the same agency and the only rule they had was that my kids couldnt stay overnight!