[SaraAvaandLileesMama]

I have been feeling the Lord tugging on my heart strings about fostering and hopefully one day adopting.
How many of you foster through the foster care system and have or will adopt? I have many questions that I would like to ask. You can leave a reply here or pm me.

[Singlemom619]

Many people have - you'd probably be better to either read some posts and PM people that sound like they have experience with the things you want to know OR post your questions and you'll get lots of replies.


(I fostered and adopted and I'm fostering now and going to adopt again.)

[hesabanana]

My oldest (the cutie in my avatar) was adopted from foster care. However, we had a horrible experience (our son's bsister was returned to bmom after we had her 11 months, one month before we adopted him) and opted to continue to build our family internationally. If you search my posts on the foster forums, you'll get the gist, or, feel free to PM me.
Fostering is not for the feint of heart.
Mommytoeli is another foster to adopt parent.

[gwenrenee007]

We have started the process and are awaiting our home study. The paper work is a bit easier, you have to do classes and there are rules about your home you have to abide by. Most of the rules are things you probably already have in place, like medicines being locked up, knives out of reach, working smoke detectors and such. The main point of foster care is to reunite families and the bio parent's from what I can tell get quite a few chances even if we don't always think they should because of what they have done to have the children taken away. We are hoping to do foster to adopt and we understand that it may be likely to have a child who we are told is legal risk (they assess the child to likely not go back to the birth parents) and we have in our home for a year or longer eventually go back to their birth parents. It is a risk you take, but all you can do is love the child while they are with you and hope it turns out the best for the child.

We are also using a private agency (not DHS or CPS) and you can get quite a bit more attention that way. It is still at no cost because the state contracts it out.

Start reading the threads on the foster forum and some people have some heart breaking situations and other's great outcomes.

PM me if I can help or if you have any specific questions.

[akasohappy]

We are thinking about this too.

[mommytoEli]

we've fostered 7 times, adopted 3 times via foster care, (then adopted eli) and are now working on our 4th adoption via foster care right now (5th adoption total) ask away!

[GDSinPA]

We are literally just getting started with the process now (taking training and filling out paperwork), have done tons of research, and have some other personal experience with foster care.

The paperwork is nothing compared to preparing a Guatemala Dossier.

Other comments indicate that it really depends on the agency you go through for how good or bad the experience will be. This is absolutely true. Some counties are terribly, I'm fortunate that my own county has a good reputation.

Also as others have said - the foster care system has 3 major goals. First is reunification whenever possible. Second is to find other family (even extended) to take a child, third is adoption outside the family. Actually, there are semi-recent federal laws that are supposed to guide this process and prevent it from dragging out, but judges and caseworkers still have a fair amount of discretion. The idea is that a parent who has their child taken should be on a clearly defined path to get their life in order and learn to properly parent. If the agency does a good job defining that path, and the parents do not put the work into improving, then the court has an easier decision to make.

Anyway - probably more info than you wanted, and I should defer to people who have gone through the system fully.

Blessings!
-Greg

[devildogwife]

We're foster parents for one of my son's tribes. Our first placement was medically fragile and straight foster. We're open to just foster, to fost adopting if possible. We work directly with the tribe. Things were very frustrating at times, but well worth it.

[SaraAvaandLileesMama]

Thank You so much for all your info. I may be sending you a PM. So be on the Look out.

[skristiesan2]

We adopted our two youngest through foster care. Their birthmom is from guatemala & their birthfathers are from Mexico. We picked our youngest up from the hospital at birth & his brother was 12 monthes old. Any questions please feel free to ask.

[carlyincali]

We are also in the very beginning stages of this. From what I have noticed, the process is way more complicated than international adoptions; but also a lot less money too.

If I had my choice, I would go to Ethiopia, but my husband does not want to spend anymore money, (money we would have to borrow anyway,) and he says there's plenty of kids here.

I would love to know, so that I can get ahead of the game, what are the requirements for the homestudy? I know it differs from county to county and state to state, but some I'm sure are the same.

Gwenrenee, when you say the medicine has to be locked up, do you really mean "locked up" as in with a lock? Also when you say knives out of reach, does that mean the steak knives in the drawer have to be removed and put up high somewhere?

[SaraAvaandLileesMama]

Hi Guys! I just found out one Bummer thing about SC (where we live) we can not foster becuase we have 5 kids and that is the limit. Rumor has it they are trying to bump it to 6. Now my next thing to find out it to go straight adoption through the FCS(which we wanted to do more anyway). Any one live in SC that knows about these things??

[carlyincali]

Mary Ann, Sammy just told me today that we could go to Ethiopia. I am so happy!!! That is truly where my heart is and I KNOW we have a child/ren there. The fees are half of Guatemala's fees. And depending on the agency, even less than half.