[saleschick]

My husband and I are approved adoptive parents out of the South Jersey Arc and now would like to switch to Foster and Fost - Adopt. Has anyone out there done this?

[HappyMomAnna]

Is your homestudy a STATE approved homestudy and are you working with the Social Services office that handles children in state care or with a private agency?

Usually if you have gone through the process of becoming an Adoptive placement for children in state care the process to become a Foster Parent should be rather easy.

In some states there is actually more training required to be a Foster Family then a straight adoptive family.

From what I have learned in most states the biggest difference is that an Adoptive Family has a Caseworker assigned to them who helps find a match and facilitate a placement... The adoptive family actually has their own caseworker.... Whereas I have noticed that families who Foster to Adopt generally deal with the childs caseworker and not their own.

The first step I would suggest is contacting your case worker. In some cases families may do both. They may act as Foster Care homes and at the same time work on an adoption placement. The hard part about Foster to Adopt is that many times you will foster several children before you know if you will be able to adopt and often it takes as long as two years before you are even sure adoption might happen.... Some families foster without being concerned if these children will eventually have a caseplan of adoption and at the same time work on matching for a legally free child at the same time.

[djkcsjs]

My husband and I started with ARC and tranfered to Fost / Adopt.
Just call your worker and request your file transfered to Fost / Adopt. You have to take an additional class (3 hours), they do your inspection and you are licensed. We decided to have one Foster slot and one Fost/Adopt slot. Make sure you make it clear what you want.
We got Foster children the day we got licensed and have had them ever since.
Good luck - we are in South Jersey also.

[saleschick]

I called Friday and started the procedure , need to call my office Tuesday to get study moved. It looks like we're taking the class on the 13th. How long have you had the children now?