[BobeezGirl]

I have a question regarding the monthly subsidy provided to care for foster children. My husband and I are hoping to adopt through foster care, and are a walk-through away from being certified foster parents.
I hesitate to ask this question, because I always feel afraid that it will be taken the wrong way. But our hope is that I will be able to quit my current job and stay at home to care for our children, while they are with us as foster children, as well as after we have adopted them.
But my concern is if the monthly subsidy would be enough that I could stay at home with them, and still be able to provide adequately for them. Also, does anyone know if it's a requirement that one of us be home while fostering children? Or if I did end up having to continue at my job, would it be okay for the children to be in daycare? It seems to me that my placing a child in daycare, would kind of negate the point of me being the foster parent, but I don't know.

Any help or advice is much appreciated!!

[mom2GRLC]

Every state has a different amount they give for the subsidy. In arkansas it's 400-475 a month depending on the age of the child.
If you work DHS will pay for the children to attend daycare. If your child is delayed and qualifies he/she may also be able to attend an Early intervention pre-school covered by Medicaid. All the children will also be covered by medicaid...so you don't have to worry about putting them on your insurance.

If your hope is to adopt the through fostercare.....you must think of each child as a potential part of your forever family. Even if they are just foster when you get them. At any time things can change and you may be able to adopt. It also goes the other way. At any moment it can change and the child can go home. Which is very hard to deal with...you just have to get to the point where you put your faith in God that the right child will be led to you at the right time.

If you've always wanted to be a stay at home mom for your kids then i would reccomend quiting your job and just do fostering. If you need more income just ask for more kids to be placed in your home....but also remember more kids means less time for each individual child as well as your husband and yourself. How would you feel if you fostered a child for a while and sent them to daycare...then one day you get to adopt that child....would you feel you lost all the precious time with your child or would you be happy with your decision to put them in daycare?

Good luck on your new foster kids.

Also another piece of advice. Once you get your foster licence don't waste anytime....go straight to the adoption people and start the process to get your home open for adoptable children too. You don't want to miss out on any kids that are ready for those adoptive homes. Your chance of getting an adoptable child sooner will be better......also....some babies that are put up for adoption go straight into adoptive homes...not foster homes...unless their is something that makes the child high risk. You should also ask for the high risk cases. That's how we got our little girl at 5 days old straight from the hospital. She was high risk adoption....we took her into foster her and begged them like crazy to keep her. The only reason why they let us keep her is because our adoption paperwork was already completed from when we adopted one of our foster children. So it was the easiest thing for them to do...and obviously in our little girls best interest since we had her from birth. But i know if we didn't have our adoption paperwork done they would have pulled her from our home and put her with a family who already had everything done.

Good luck!!!!

jessica

[michelec]

Jessica-
I am a stay at home mom and understand how hard it can be to give up that second income. When we were saving for our first adoption it was easy because we saved all of my income and lived on my husbands. It was harder the second time because we are living on only his income. We looked at every way to save money here and there. Here are just a few suggestions that might make it more possible for you to stay home.

1- refinance your home or car for a smaller payment
2- we went down to basic cable, and got rid of our Netflix account
3- streamlined our cellphone bills
4- kept our thermostat just 2-3 degrees lower.
5- limited how much we went out to eat.
6- streamlined our telephone service

these are just a few things that could easily save you 2-300 dollars a month.

Good luck. Although its been tight a few months and I don't go shopping hardly ever its been worth it to spend time with my kids.
Take care, michele