[MeliJavi]

After debating what to do and realizing the cost etc. we have recently started looking at foster adopt.
I wondered about the process.

Are you able to know race, medical or situation history etc?

or do you have to accept each and every baby placed with you, and if you do not accept do you get rejected by your agency where they will not place any one else with you?

How do they get information or knowledge these babies are coming?

We are in Florida and I always thought that the state controlled the placement I have since found out or read somewhere that there are agencies that do the placing not the state.

Can someone explain. I have contact several agencies approved by the state for foster care and none have answered. I'm sure calls are probably easiest for these people but I work during the day still (until we are blessed with a bundle) and its difficult to call during the day.

Thank you all for your info in advance. If I said something way out there or just wrong dont feel bad about informing me of what is right, but please be nice

[ScrapMonkey]

I suggest posting this in the foster care area for more information.

We are foster to adopt. We get a packet of info with basic medical info but you do not get full disclosure until you are deep into the adoption process. As in, a few weeks before court. With our first son, he was placed with us as a toddler so there was some info we didn't know. Our second son was with us from birth so all the info they had was pretty much from birth records and from us.

We have turned down babies who were too ill for our home since we had other very small children. You do not have to take every placement but you'll always worry that saying no makes them put you at the back of some do-not-call list. It's a common foster parent fear. My personal feelings are they may not like you saying no, but when they really need to place a child, you'll get a call.

You can always specify what type of child you will take but the more open you are to age, gender, race, etc, the more likely you are to get a placement.

If you are just looking to adopt a healthy newborn, this is probably not the route to take. It's uncertain, emotional, kids go home when you don't expect them to, people tell you want you want to hear even when they know better, etc. It is a hard, hard road. If you think you can take in a child, love them like your own for however long you have them and still potentially send them home... welcome to foster care.

Foster to adopt is kind of a misnomer. You are a foster parent. That's all. The state still wants to send that child home to it's birth family. If that doesn't work out, you're the back-up plan and they are happy you're there. But still, you're the back-up plan. It's a hard thing to be when you love a child as your own.

Good luck. For tons more feedback, post in the foster care forum.

[OakShannon]

In some states, you can be licensed as a foster-adopt family (a little different from straight foster licensing) and you are matched with a child or sibling group whose case looks more likely to go to adoption. I'm not sure if that is true in Florida, however. Posting in the foster care & adoption forum will give you answers from people in Florida, which will be more helpful to you. If that is not the case in Florida, then you would be foster parents but would have the option of adopting a foster child placed with you if it happens that the child's case goes to TPR. (Termination of Parental Rights - which means that the court has determined that the parents can not regain custody of their children.)

For us, being foster-adopt that means that before a child is placed in our home, we go to a disclosure meeting where we are given details about the child's case and any medical, developmental or emotional issues the child has. The point of the disclosure meeting is for you to decide if the child seems like a good match to you - and you are not penalized for saying no. (Foster parents, by contrast, are often not given much information or notice before a child is placed with them because it is often an emergency situation.) So far, the SW's have been very honest with us at these meetings, but not everyone has had that experience. It is very true that the more open you are, the more likely you are to be matched with a child. Also, children who look likely to need an adoptive home are usually a little older, because it takes time to do a complete search for relatives to take custody of the child and for the parents to have time to work their caseplan. And there are certain issues that are common to a lot of children in foster care so I agree with Scrapmonkey that if your dream is to adopt a healthy infant, this is not the best route to take. (And I say that as someone who did just that. So it's not impossible, but it's not the most common outcome either.)

Scrapmonkey is quite right, also, that no matter how you are licensed and no matter how the people involved are predicting the case will go - we are foster parents only for some time after a child has been matched with us and you really never know how things will ultimately turn out. We ARE the back-up plan. Reunification is ALWAYS the goal, either with the parents or the extended family. And you have to be able to deal with that. Not an easy thing to do after you have completely fallen in love with the child you are caring for. I'm waiting for my second match after adopting a baby through foster care, and I'm waiting quite patiently because I know that the hard part comes after the child arrives. So I'm saving my anxious worrying for that!

As far as placement by the state or agencies - I'm not sure how that works in Florida. (I'm in California.) Here, each county has SW's that place foster children with families that they have licensed. But there are also non-profit agencies (FFA's or Foster Family Agencies) that ALSO license families and the counties contact them with children who need to be placed if they don't have a foster family available. FFA's can work with any county in their state. They usually provide a greater level of support for families both before and after placement. In our case, they also provide a higher monthly stipend to foster parents. You can choose to work with an FFA or to be licensed directly by the county where you live.

[tagyourit]

I totally agree with the two previous posters. We are foster to adopt and have had 11 kids in our home but only 2 have been adopted (well almost finalization is on 11/20) It is a hard, sad and sometimes lonely feeling road to travel in finding your forever kids. All of the children that have been in our home have had serious emotional issues and even some health issues. They have had rough lives and have delt with more in their few little years than I could ever imagine. That is why it can be a little more difficult to chose this route. I will continue to find my other children this way because I feel like these kids need a family like ours. BTW, never feel bad for not taking a placement. I took one that was way too hard one time and I learned a lot about myself in that year before they went back to their mom. There is no black list for saying no. Not all families and kids are matches.

[jalapeno]

I agree with previous posters as well. We did adopt two "healthy" infants from foster care (both drug exposed in utero but no issues so far that can definitively be traced to that). But we also fostered 3 others that ultimately went "home". It's incredibly hard to go that route.

Part of the difficulty is that there really doesn't seem to be a "typical" case when it comes to foster children. It's really hard to make an informed decision when you can't necessarily trust all the information you're given.

Can you specify race/ethnicity? Sure, you can try. But child services doesn't always know that information. Race isn't always obvious by appearance (particularly for newborns) and so they rely on the birthmother to provide that information. Well, quite understandably, many birthmothers are incredibly angry and overwhelmed that their child is being taken from them and they aren't always willing to share information. We had a baby girl that we were told was Hispanic. Well, her mother was Mexican-American and said she didn't know who the baby's father was. I think perhaps she just didn't want to give that info. I'm sure our foster daughter's father was AA. But she continued to be listed as Hispanic because that was all child services was able to confirm. We didn't care obviously but would have wanted to know the truth if we'd been able to adopt her.

Can you ask for medical information? Sure, of course you can. But again it won't necessarily be available. And much of that is reliant upon birthparent cooperation. And you can't always rely on information the birthparent does provide. My kids' birthmother told child services she was bipolar. Is she really? Has she actually been diagnosed and treated or did she decide on her own that she has similar symptoms to a friend who's bipolar? Was she using that as a euphemism because she has wild mood swings? Did she think saying something like that would earn her some forgiveness for her behavior and thereby make it easier to get her children back? I have no idea. It would be good to know. I'm ok with whatever the truth is but I may never know it.

How does child services get information that babies are coming? If child services takes a newborn into custody In my limited experience, it's typically for one of two reasons. One is if the child has been drug exposed in utero, in which case the hospital will report it. The other is if the mother has recently had other children removed from her care and child services manages to find out where she's given birth.

Best of luck in your journey!!

[Barksum]

We did not foster to adopt, but did straight adoption from foster care. We adopted toddlers. We were also foster parents, but did not adopt any of the foster children placed with us. We were told a few times that 'this child will FOR SURE be TPR'd and be on the adoption track', only to have them reunify. I'm sincerly glad I did not give much heed to those 'certainties' given by the cw's.

We were able to fill out paperwork stating what kinds of issues we were willing to accept, and those that we wished to avoid. We were able to specify race/ethnicities that we were willing/unwilling to adopt as well. We also able to specify age, level of physical disability, etc. etc. Additionally we had say in whether we were willing to accept legal risk cases, or only those who had already been TPR'd. We had the option to go forward or withdraw with each of the children we considered.

Having said all that...what you specify and what you get can be worlds apart. The average child in foster care is not there because of a happy, healthy home life. Most are traumatized in some way. Yes, even newborns. (drug exposure, poor maternal health, etc. ) Generally kids adopted from foster care have some level of special needs. (Watch: there will be 10 new posts stating that they adopted from foster care and their kids are perfectly fine and healthy! LOL This can, and does!, happen, but one should not assume that this will be the case.)

We said no FASD. I have 3 kids who were absolutely prenatally exposed, one who was probably exposed. We said no RAD/attachment disorder. I have two with mild-ish attachment problems. The cw's give the info they have, usually, but that info is just that; what they have. There can be worlds of information that they DO NOT have. Some birth mothers are very up front about drug use, others aren't. Sometimes neglect and/or abuse is known and documented, other times not. For my kids there was no prenatal care, very little bio parent medical history, and sometimes (usually) little history of ANY kind. Establishing paternity, with certainty, isn't always a done deal, either. And sometimes cw's are not always candid about the information that they know. It happens.

I can't tell you how often I've heard adoptive parents (who adopted from foster care) say, "We weren't told about ______________! We didn't expect this!" You have to know going in that there will be much information that you simply do not have. It's a wild leap of faith. In my opinion it is well worth it, but that has been my experience. Perhaps we had low expectations, so weren't horrified when things came up unexpectedly for us. I'm not sure. It has been difficult at times and we are not living the way my dreams were when we began this whole adoption thing. But dreams are not reality, anyway, so one can't base lifetime decisions on mere dreams. Dreams are the dessert we give ourselves; reality is the meat and potatoes we live on. (Or the tofu and rice, if you prefer! )

[leahcar]

Florida doesn't do "foster to adopt". You chose foster OR adopt. That doesn't mean if you are fostering a child that becomes available for adoption that you won't be allowed to adopt. You might or might not be able to adopt the child. The goal of fostering in Florida is always reunification of the child with the birth family, not adoption. Where are you in Florida? Check here: The Florida Department of Children and Families

[MeliJavi]

Thank u to everyone for helping so much. I am going to speak to some local agencies and see what we can come up with. We are a few months into real research although I had been asking my husband to consider adoption for a while. Since now we are getting close to our 30s he started considering having a baby and actually reminded me of all the complications we had with my son 9 years ago and how we would never want to put a baby at risk because it would be selfish so we of course thought of adoption. We are just trying to narrow it all down... so many different things to consider it's frustrating at times so while we research we are finishing the remodel of our home preparing for my resignation from my day job which I love so it will be really hard to do that, and just making sure we are not in a transitioning phase when we start the adoption. So thank you all again for being so nice and so informative.