[shy_bear]

Hello, we are wanting to start the process to do a foster/adopt situation. We are living in Adams county and don't know where to start. We have two adopted children, but they were both domestic infant placements. We are not sure if we should go through the state or through an agency? We are wanting a younger child, under 4, sex doesn't matter nor does race. Any thoughts or suggestions would be greatly appreciated!!!

[shycar]

Welcome Shybear. We are also from adams county. I am going through an agency and that is becouse we started just as foster care. After two years of foster care we decided to do legal risk. We have a 3 yr old foster son he is a legal risk placement through Jefferson county and we hope to finalize everything by the end of this year. We have had him for 2 yrs now. We are getting next week two girls ages 4 and 1, they are legal risk and they are from Adams county.

On deciding if you should go through the county or agency is all up to you. They both have their neg and pos points. I dont know much of just going through the county, but I do know through an agency. We have been foster parent for almost 4 years (wow next month will be four years). We get a lot of support with our agency. If we have problems with the child or the sw they help us deal with it. They gives us lots of training and if you need help on a specific matter they provide the trainging for that. We also get a case manager that visits our home once a month, unless the children are harder to deal then they come more often. We also get a foster parent partner that live near us for support. Its wonderful. I believe we also get better chances of getting a child faster becouse they deal with more then one county. Our agency deal with Jefferson, Adams, Arapahoe, Douglas, Denver, and many more that I dont remember. In our agency they only do foster care or legal risk (fost/adopt), they do not do just adoption of legally free children yet. You also get less money then just going through the county. I love our agency. I think that you should probably call the county you would like to adopt from and ask questions (like how long it take on training, how the process work every county is different) and then also call some agencies and ask how many questions you want. If you want our agency I can give that to you. Just ask lots of question to make sure you are making the best decision for you and your family.

The funny thing is that all our legal risk kids were not placed specifically placed by our agency. With our fs-- we had two other foster children in our home from Jefferson County. We told the sw of those children that we wanted to start doing legal risk after these kids leave. She called the following week asking if would would take a 15 month old boy as legal risk. We of course said yes-- then she called our agency and told them about him and she wanted him place with us.

On the two girls we are getting, we had another fs with us for a year. His sw knew that we would love to have a girl to adopt, but we wanted to start after we adopted our fs. Well she called us and told me about these two girls and if we would want them. Of course we said YES . So she called our agency and told them of the girls and she wanted them placed with us. So we got very very lucky.

Good luck with everything.

Shycar

[shycar]

Welcome Shybear. We are also from adams county. I am going through an agency and that is becouse we started just as foster care. After two years of foster care we decided to do legal risk. We have a 3 yr old foster son he is a legal risk placement through Jefferson county and we hope to finalize everything by the end of this year. We have had him for 2 yrs now. We are getting next week two girls ages 4 and 1, they are legal risk and they are from Adams county.

On deciding if you should go through the county or agency is all up to you. They both have their neg and pos points. I dont know much of just going through the county, but I do know through an agency. We have been foster parent for almost 4 years (wow next month will be four years). We get a lot of support with our agency. If we have problems with the child or the sw they help us deal with it. They gives us lots of training and if you need help on a specific matter they provide the trainging for that. We also get a case manager that visits our home once a month, unless the children are harder to deal then they come more often. We also get a foster parent partner that live near us for support. Its wonderful. I believe we also get better chances of getting a child faster becouse they deal with more then one county. Our agency deal with Jefferson, Adams, Arapahoe, Douglas, Denver, and many more that I dont remember. In our agency they only do foster care or legal risk (fost/adopt), they do not do just adoption of legally free children yet. You also get less money then just going through the county.

My suggestion is call the counties that you would like to adopt from and ask question. How their process work and how long their training takes and what kind of support they have. Every county is different and they do things differently. For example in Jefferson county they have specific Judges for foster children and for adoption. Thats all they do, but in Adams the Judges switch every couple of months. So a Judge could be working on criminal one month and then the next month they could be working with domistic cases. So its important to learn how they each county do things. I would also call different agency and see how they work. The training might take less or longer time then other agency or counties. Some agencies only do legal risk and some do foster care only and some do both. Some agencies in CO are Bethany and Ariel Clinical Services for Children (thats the one I go through) and there is Maple Star (I believe thats the correct name).

I wish you luck. I welcome you again. Being a foster parent has been the best thing. I love it and I do plan to keep going after adopting. If you have any question feel free to ask.



Good luck with everything.

Shycar

[shycar]

Hmmm it sent twice I thought it erased my first one. hmm man and i re wrote everything. LOL Sorry about that.