[hkolln]

Hi everyone. I am new here so bear with me as I don't know much about the adoption process and I have a ton of questions.

We found out last week our 6 yr old niece is currently in foster care in Idaho (we live in Florida). Her mother is in prison for drug possession and received a 4 yr sentence and probably won't be release for awhile as she already has skipped out before on other charges. The foster system in Idaho is working on terminating her rights to her daughter. When we found out last week my husband, the great guy he is, spent 2 days tracking down the social worker on our nieces case. In the process we found out terrible things about our nieces condition and how she has been abused. It is so sad I can't type it her.

The thing is we wish to take her in and adopt her. The social worker is starting the interstate thing where they transfer her case to Florida and they do the case study, etc...but in the meantime our niece sits in the system which sucks! All we want is for her to have the love and stability she so deserves. We know there is hope and we want to help her so badly.

We have to attend a 10 wk MAPP class here and do a case study which could take months...I don't want our niece sitting in another home but we were told she may have to. Isn't there a program, since we are family, to expedite this process? I'm not sure if we need to contact an attorney as of yet or not? Has anyone done a relative adoption like this between states while the child is in the foster system?

I'm so worried about her welfare. I want her to be safe and feel loved and I feel like it's gonna take forever!!

Does anyone have an advice on our situation?

Thanks!

[MamaS]

I don't know anything about interstate adoptions, except that anytime the "state" is involved things take a long time and are complicated.
Perhaps you could ask your child's social worker to allow you to write her and send photos of yourself, your home, your pets your family, etc. to familiarize her with her relatives. Or perhaps you could make a video and send to her -- of the family, pets, neighborhood, etc. Sort of a "This is the school where you will go", "This is the swing in the backyard where you can play" "These are our seven Dobermans -- they are really sweet!" (JUST KIDDING about the Dobes!)
Then maybe you could work up to short phone calls, and being allowed to send gifts for birthday, Christmas, etc.
All this would depend on the caseworker, but if she is supportive, then when the "State" is finally through with its paperwork, you and your niece will know each other a little.

[hotspice58]

Find out if either state has kinship adoption. That should "speed" the process up. I've heard that the classes may be waived or the child placed while the paparents are taking them.

[hotspice58]

Find out if either state has kinship adoption. That should "speed" the process up. I've heard that the classes may be waived or the child placed while the paparents are taking them.

[2manyks]

we did a kinship adoption last year. it was quite simple in our case, because the kids hadnt gone into foster care yet. the laywer went to the prison to get the living parent (one parent died - drugs) to sign parental rights over to me and 10 minutes in court and it was done. but i want to warn you that times will be tough. i just thought that i could be her aunt turned into mommy and love her and everything would be great. it has been tough. were talking attachment disorder and i can almost guarantee that your new daughter will have some attachment problems. it just happens. not to scare you, because things are good now and always getting better. pay attention to the classes. youll need the knowledge later. AND get your new little girl into counseling immediately. we took our 2 kids to play therapy and then attachment therapy and it helps tons!

[hkolln]

Thanks for all the replies.

We are still working thru the process. We have a private agency that is licensed in our state coming out Saturday to do our home study. It will be expidited so we should have it all completed in 2-3 weeks. We decided to speed up the process we would pay for the home study ourselves instead of waiting for the foster care system here to do it. That would be just too long...considering they are talking 3-6 months here. Also our MAPP class will be done in 2 weeks and we'll be licensed. Then they send the mapp class certification and the home study all over to Idaho and they add it to our nieces case plan.

What they are waiting on now is the permancy hearing where the judge will determine permancy for our niece. Since there is aggravated abuse she is on an emergency basis so it should go somewhat quicker we hope. They have me and my husband down on the case plan...and also the ICPC (interstate program) and her coming here to live with us in Florida. It all depends upon the Judge if he allows the permancy plan to go ahead or he stalls it. We are hoping he will be for the plan so she can come here to us so we can work on helping her out. She will need alot of love and patience and therapy for the rest of her life. Everytime I think of what my sister in law allowed happen to her I cry. But as long as she is alive there is always hope and we are going to try our best to help her no matter what. We just want her safe and happy.

Since she is in the foster care system in Idaho already we can only do it this way. They won't allow the kinship thing because she was already in the system when we found out about her. So we get to go thru the system which tends to drag their feet!

We also have a friend who is a state representative for Florida and in our district who is going to speed up our interstate paperwork once it makes it to Florida.

I just want it all over yesterday. I just wish they would have called us when this first happened! I'm finding out the system is very slow!