[OakShannon]

I have a question that I thought more experienced foster parents might have a better idea about.

My foster son is 6 months old. Him bmom has mental health issues and is not a good source of information about family. (We have no info about Daniel's father.) During the relative search, they found that Daniel's mother is from another state and his maternal grandmother lives there - but they can't locate her. Grandma also has adopted Daniel's older brother, who is 9 years old. Grandma has a recent felony conviction, so they don't consider her a possible placement for Daniel, but, in any case, they don't know where she is.

No one knows how or why bmom ended up in my state or exactly when she got here. Because of her issues, it would be hard to know where else she might have been. Obviously, her family has no idea that she's had another child. So here's my question: Is it possible that she also has other children, perhaps born in other states, that no one here knows about? In a relative search, would children who have been placed in care in other states have come up?

As we get closer to adoption - assuming things continue to move in that direction - we plan to ask for as much info as we can about Daniel's birth family in case he wants contact with them in the future, particularly his brother. We were talking about it the other day and wondering if there might be other siblings out there too. Not sure there's any way we would ever know, in any case - but the conversation made us curious about how accessible that information is.

[hrisme]

Originally Posted by OakShannon

I have a question that I thought more experienced foster parents might have a better idea about.

My foster son is 6 months old. Him bmom has mental health issues and is not a good source of information about family. (We have no info about Daniel's father.) During the relative search, they found that Daniel's mother is from another state and his maternal grandmother lives there - but they can't locate her. Grandma also has adopted Daniel's older brother, who is 9 years old. Grandma has a recent felony conviction, so they don't consider her a possible placement for Daniel, but, in any case, they don't know where she is.

No one knows how or why bmom ended up in my state or exactly when she got here. Because of her issues, it would be hard to know where else she might have been. Obviously, her family has no idea that she's had another child. So here's my question: Is it possible that she also has other children, perhaps born in other states, that no one here knows about? In a relative search, would children who have been placed in care in other states have come up?

As we get closer to adoption - assuming things continue to move in that direction - we plan to ask for as much info as we can about Daniel's birth family in case he wants contact with them in the future, particularly his brother. We were talking about it the other day and wondering if there might be other siblings out there too. Not sure there's any way we would ever know, in any case - but the conversation made us curious about how accessible that information is.

Are you sure his bio mom isn't able to give you at least basic information, such as whether she had other children? My birthmother has schziophrenia & is not always coherent, but in two visits we did manage to get a substantial amount of family information including the birthfather's name & his parent's names, and the fact that I had two brothers (she even remembered the birthdates). Of course, we had to sort out the valid information from the psychosis--we decided it was highly unlikely I was a quadruplet or that my birthfather was also married to her roommate! But we did get enough to begin a search & I have located my birthfather's family & one brother.

As far as the relative search goes, I suppose it depends on if they are using a national database or a local database. It also may or may not be accurate, and if you don't know what you're searching for it can be like looking for a needle in a haystack. My biological brothers were both placed for adoption through DCFS, and yet when my caseworker(who worked for DCFS and had access to all of their databases) searched for them neither came up.