just starting

Hi Michelle, I live in Western NY - in the Finger Lakes area. My husband and I have adopted two waiting older children, but it was a straight adoption from the state photolisting, not foster care. But we are in the process of becoming foster parents now.

Holly: Are you currently taking the foster parenting classes now? My husband and I are in our fifth week of classes....five more to go. We are in the MAPP training program. We will then be certified for seven counties in the Western New York area. We currently have two little girls, ages 3 & 8. I cannot have anymore children medically (had surgery) so we would love to share our hearts and home with more children. We are going to try to foster newborns to 12 months. How about you guys? Are you looking to foster to adopt or just foster right now? Thank you so much for replying to my post! :)

We have already taken our MAPP classes, but we were certified by a private agency in Syracuse for just straight adoption. They are about an hour and a half drive for us, so we are looking closer to home for foster care. Our county DSS is now looking over our information to see if we need to take additional training, or if they can accept what we have already been through. I really hope we don't have to take the entire thing over again! We are actually healing right now from a failed adoption attempt of a 13 year old boy. So we have decided to give foster care a try, rather than jump right back into a straight adoption experience. We would like to do long-term care, where hopefully the kids we foster would be available for adoption at some point. We are looking to foster girls or boys, age 4-12. I am unsure whether we will be certified for one child or two - I wouldn't mind another sibling pair, having already had a great experience with my own kids. Right now though our available bedroom space is empty, so we have to buy either a bed or bunk beds - my husband I haven't really discussed this yet so I am not sure what we will be doing. I am excited though - foster care is something I thought my husband would never agree to do, but he is open-minded and talking positively about it now. A friend of his at work does foster care, and I think this is why he is having this change of heart. I have a website, [url]www.olderchildadoption.homestead.com[/url] where you can read about my adoption experience.

Help!!!! we are just about to be certified as adoptive parents in New York state and have had a social worker do our homestudy-we do not have an agancy yet and are stuck on two accounts 1) we have decided to do an older child/sibling group adoption and cannot find and agency in westchester that will do this and 2) we have been told by our social worker that we should take the Mapp or path classes--I have called our local DDS about 15 times and no one responds --can someone provide us with some direction and advise?? Thank you much in advance--i have learned alot on this board and appreciate everyone's input! God bless adoption mom in waiting

Hello, my husband and I are also from the western ny area. We start our mapps classes next month. From what they have told us based on our room size we will only be able to take a single child. I have two young children of my own 3 and 4. We are looking to foster an older child with the intent to adopt. Would like to be able to chat with someone from western ny.

Hi, I am Elizabeth and my partner Russ and I are looking into fostering. We live in Cattaraugus County in Western NY anyone with suggestions about how to get started ect. or just advice please do. Thanks.

Hi I'm Michele and my DH and I are from Central NY. The Syracuse area. We are almost 1/2 way through our MAPP classes. We are hoping to foster to adopt under 2 years old. :)

Hi,Sounds like we're all in about the same boat. We have had our initial home visit and are scheduled to start the MAPP classes in January (they don't do it Nov/Dec because of the holidays!). Frustrating to have to wait two more months since nothing but our initial paperwork could be submitted until the MAPP class. As far as getting ahold of the DSS.....call...call...and continue to call. I was finally lucky enough to have someone pick up the phone (on accident!) who told me about the introduction/welcome meeting. I was able to download the application from the state website and take it with me to the first meeting along with as much paperwork and documentation as I could get together. After that, they saw we were really excited and interested and we had our first home visit within a week. So now we just have to sit on our hand and wait. We have applied to foster/adopt with the ultimate ourcome being adoption. Those of you already in the MAPP class.....are you finding them very helpful? Just can't wait to get going!!

We loved our MAPP classes. We are done with them now and we miss them very much. We thought they were informative on many different levels as well as a time to build relationships with others going through the same process. Since they have been over i don't feel as connected. We are waiting for our Case Worker to finish typing up our home study and then we will be done. We are even thinking about joining the Foster Support group they have in the area so that we will still have those connections. So far it has all been a great experience! We also seem to have been recruiting when we didn't even know it. Our excitement seems to have gotten others in our life thinking about it. I have a friend at work who is now starting the process and a cousin who is now looking into it.

Hi,I am also in Western NY. My husband and I were certified in July and got our first placement of 2 non-siblings a few weeks ago. I would love to keep in touch.