What to hope for....

Are you open to any race? Drug exposure? I'm a single gal in NJ and I got the call four days after being certified. I was open to any race, gender, and drug exposre. My son was two weeks old and waiting in the hospital for a family. He was exposed to drugs in the womb but totally healthy! I went to see him the day after I got the call and brought him home the day after that. He's a gorgeous AA boy! And I could not be happier. I ask about your openess to race and drug exposure because many people wait a LONG time for healthy CC children. Hope you get a call soon!

Nope. Our only stipulations are the age, birth - 3, and not medically fragile or HIV/Hep + That's it. Congrats on your baby boy! I can't wait!!! I just had someone call to see if I could start watching her infant daughter when she goes back to work in April - NOW they will call me with a placement!! HAHAHAHA

You should get a call soon! I know it's hard waiting. And then you can take care of two little ones! Your friends child and yours! :)

I live in Allegheny County and I was certified in July of 2004 I JUST got my first placement on Feb. 4. I was so sad because I couldn't believe I had to wait so long. It took me longer to get a placement than it did to go through MAPP training. Waiting is the hardest part, but everything will work out. My age range was actually 3-8 and I got a call for a baby. She's on an apnea monitor and oxygen. I would have never imagined that I'd be caring for a medically fragile little one but I'd do it again in a hearbeat!

Well we haven't been waiting that long at all. But it's a little scary wondering when that phone call is going to be... what am I going to hear from the other end? We live in Luzerne Co. We will attend our very last offical training on March 1st, although we are approved in agency now. I do wish we had considerable more training than that was provided. But that's me. =)

We've been waiting since the end of November. They actually finished our licensing in a hurry so we could take in a little boy they wanted to place with us, but then the judge decided to leave him where he was, so we are still waiting. We've had a few leads, but nothing has come from them yet... It does seem like a long time to wait, since we have almost no restrictions. But since we do have other kids, we have asked for a placement with a 95% certainty that tpr will take place, and I know that will make it take longer. I just go back and forth between frustration and patience! Reading the boards helps, because otherwise it might seem like it will never happen! Good luck, everyone!

Does it really take so long for a TPR? It seems that there are soooooooo many out there. Or is the complication being that it's hard to find a younger TPR or a more stable/healthy TPR? Like I said, I'm rather new to all this so I don't "know the ropes"

Yes, TPR can take a long time from what I understand. First of all, a parent is almost always given the opportunity to have their child returned if they get the issues resolved that led to the child being removed in the first place. While theoretically there is a time limit (of 18 months) to how long the parent can try, in reality that time limit can be stretched out by a number of things. Let's say the mom does half of what she has been told she has to do, then backslides and doesn't do the rest. She can get a judge to give her an extension. Or, say she doesn't do any of it until month 17, and then does a lot at once--she can have an extension. Or say she names a different father after the first 12 months, so that the agency has to spend the next several months tracking down dad #2, getting dna tests, and then running through all of his relatives to see if any of them want the child... So, even for a baby taken into foster care at birth, that baby will probably not be tpr'd until around 18 months. During the 18 or so months when reunification with bioparents is the goal, that baby or child has been living with a foster family, and when the goal is changed from reunification to adoption, that foster family will almost always be given the first opportunity to adopt the child. Only if the foster family doesn't want to or cannot adopt will the child be moved to a new potentially adoptive placement. So, if you are like us, and want a young child who is already tpr'd or is very very likely to be, you are only going to be considered for kids whose current foster homes do not want to adopt them, which is a much smaller number than the number of young kids tpr'd in a given year. Of course, the more problems a child has, the more likely their foster family can't or won't be able to adopt them, so the number of young children with significant issues who are going to be available for you to foster/adopt is going to be disproportionally special needs... At least, this is what has been told to us and what we have experienced. We only have 3 things on our list of special needs we won't consider, and 2 of the 4 kids we have been contacted about had one of those conditions. So, we are still waiting. Really, 2 months is not a long wait and we can't complain, it just seems longer because it took so long (for us) to get through all the classes and paperwork to the point where we were approved and licensed and ready to start waiting. We actually started all that before last Easter. Good luck everybody!

Hey Mel, To give you an example of how long a TPR takes. We had 2 children placed with us; the little boy was 4 weeks old and the little girl was 13 months old. They are still with us and we are finally in the process of adopting them. Our son is now 2-1/2 and our daughter is 3-1/2 and it will still be at least another 3 months before we can finalize. Now, so you understand, their mom did NOT appeal the TPR. Had she done so it would have tacked close to 1-1/2 yrs. to our timeframe. Mallory is exactly right with how she described things. Best of luck to all of you. I hope your wait is over soon. Michelle

That's not quite what I ment...What I ment is does it really take much longer to look for a child who already is a TPR? I understand that obtaining a TPR takes a very long time. I understand why too, in many cases. They want to give the parents every opportunity.... It seems like there are alot of TPR kids out there already. Perhaps my perception is skewed..Perhaps the ones I see on the SWAN site are mostly medical or emotional difficult children... many many teens. I'm sorry for the confusion Moms! I'll make myself more clear next time. =)

Again, I am no expert, but my understanding is that yes, since we are only open to kids that are either already tpr'd or very close to being tpr'd, that will make our wait for a placement much longer. I don't remember what age range you are hoping for, but when you are looking on the photolistings and seeing kids who are young and tpr'd, the chances are that the child has some very significant issues. These issues may not be mentioned in the little blurb about the child, both because it would be a violation of the child's privacy to have a lot of their medical/psych information posted on the web, and because the child's worker is trying to attract potential families--not send them running in the other direction. Furthermore, according to our worker, some counties don't even start tpr on a child until they have the adoptive family lined up, so officially those counties have "no" children who are legally free and looking for an adoptive home. If your search is limited to kids who are already tpr'd, then you would not be considered for ANY children from those counties, unless maybe they were part of a failed or disrupted adoption. To search for a child in a certain age range, who is already tpr'd but for some reason is not being adopted by their current foster family or by any other "waiting" family already known to the child's agency, and therefore is at the stage of being "publicized" by that agency --well, it is like looking for a needle in a haystack. You could get lucky and find one right away, or you could have to wait a while for all those planets to line up. Waiting is annoying, and some days it seems to me like it will never happen, but those who have btdt keep reassuring me that it will! Hope things go smoothly for you:)