[LacyMom]

does it vary by county? is there one?

the CM told me there wasn't one that once approved to foster, our file would go to their monthly adoption meeting and if the committe approved it

they'd circulate our file for a match.

does this sound right?

tia

[mommamarci]

That is what happened with us as well. We were presented to the SNAP committee last week and approved. There is just one home study and it can be used for foster or adoption.

[po]

that is not what we were told years ago. They may have changed it now, but I kept sending homestudies about Thurs. child and no answer. Also for the children in Forever Families. Finally after several year I was told you had to have an adoption homestudy. We were the first family in our county to take the classes and thought we were doing everything right. We have since had to take the classes 3 times each time we changed agencies. Now after 20 years of trying to adopt and being turned down for 10 kids some of which lived in our home almost 4 years we are calling it quits. If you step on someones toes you get black balled, but also it used to be the unwritten rule that they did not want foster parents to adopt. That would mean that the agency would loose that many beds in a foster home.

[naca]

There is a difference between an adoptive homestudy and a foster license homestudy. We have both.

Our adoptive homestudy was updated in May '08 and had to be approved by the SNAP board. When we had to do our relicensing in Nov '08- we had to have a completely new homestudy done b/c it was a foster homestudy.

[EandDmom]

We switched to foster/adopt from just foster about 3 months into fostering since they said if our current kids went tpr they would move them to a preadoptive home and we didnt' want to loose them. Our caseworkers supervisor said since our homestudy was so new she would just list it as foster/adopt and we wouldn't have to get an adoptive one done.

[mommamarci]

Hmmm, we are straight foster, but said we would be open to adopting a child placed with us that became available. We just did one home study but it was presented to the SNAP committee. Could ours be both foster and adoptive? I guess I need to check on that...

[lakin11]

With us, they just updated the info to include information about the kids. As far as I know, it was not presented to the SNAP committee. We haven't even seen a copy of the original one, although I guess we could if we asked. We were told that was all that needed to be done. Just adding the info for the specific children we'd be adopting. Given that we have 2 cases going on, they just did one update I believe.

[naca]

Who knows.. maybe my area is just stupid in doing 2 different homestudies.. I know they are a bit 'off' on other things they do! LOL!

*edited to say * When the lady who does the homestudies comes out- she does just use the previous one and update it, however she distictively said that she had to redo one in Nov for a foster homestudy vs our May one that was an adoptive one.. Go figure

[lakin11]

I LOVE how together this state is! I'm wondering if it will get any better with things streamlined through the state. Not holding my breath though!

When we first got started, we were only foster, even though we wanted to adopt and had taken the adoption classes. However, the paperwork they fille out was for the fostering part, not the adoptive part. The way the lady made it seem was the adoption one was only if you were doing straight adoption vs fostering, then adopting. That the key was you had taken the 2 extra training classes. Our lawyer said the judge probably wouldn't even look at it with our kids given that the kids have been our home so long. Who knows. It could all change tomorrow!

[bluebird38]

In our area, we also have to have 2 separate homestudies done.

[LacyMom]

thank you all for responding.

she said we'd be listed as foster to adopt

and she told me bout the monthly adoption meeting. and the committee that approves files for adoption. must be the SNAP committee.

I'll definitely keep track of this, b/c I don't want the adoption side to be lost out or find out I can't b/c it wasn't done, when they said all we needed was approval from snap.

its amazing how different the counties can be w/in the state.