Dual Licensure : Can you be approved for adoption and licensed for foster care ????

When we did our home study it was foster to adopt. Did you mention that to your case worker? They should have notated that on the home study.

I did , but it just says Foster Care Homestudy ..only briefly mentions adoption..but since I posted I have spoken with the Adoptions Coordinator at FSS Jax and she told me that once I am licensed call her and they can just use my FC Homestudy to send to the caseworker of the children that I am interested in....I have already found the name and phone number of one the little girls caseworkers..so I am just waiting to hear that I am licensed..been waiting for a week officially now.... Farrah

Ok, so you wish for straight adoption. Those are for kids already TPR'd. They pool your home study and pick out suitable parents to possibly adopt. See we are doing foster-adopt. We take in the child, if TPR happens then we get to adopt. In the meantime we are also fostering the child until they are open for adoption. We are just going to adopt if the possiblity happens with the foster children we take in.

I'm actually doing both.... The story is.. I will be doing "Foster to Adopt" - Fostering with hopes of adoption is what it should really be called..(lol) and just straight fostering as well HOWEVER.....I am ALSO considering straight adoption of kids who are already TPR'd, There is this one little girl in particular who I am inquiring about adopting..don't know if they will let me adopt her or not, but I want to be considered...There are also 1-2 other kids that I may be interested in as well But a lot of those kids who are already tpr'd have many people trying to be matched with them and some of the kids on the photolisting already have families , they just haven't been removed... Basically I'm keeping my options open.....because even if I do get to adopt the little girl I inquired about, I would also like to continue fostering.... Does that make sense?

Ahh this is where they kind of get you. My wife and I are foster parents with the ultimate goal being adoption. Currently we only have a foster care homestudy, in the event that you are matched with a child available for adoption they ammend/copy your foster care homestudy and make it an adoption homestudy. This is all good when dealing with your agency and the children are located in Florida, however if you try to adopt out of state you won't have an approved adoption homestudy which is required to even speak to a caseworker in another state. That's the catch in Florida when trying to adopt out of state.

Fortunately all the kids I am seriously interested in right now are in Florida..... although they are not in my county ..which will complicate things a little, but not a whole lot... I hate the way Florida does it...Most everyone else I know in other states who want to adopt and foster..are dually licensed.... The bad thing here is the agency that licenses for Foster Care is different than the one that does the adoption...I know it's retarded, but the way they do it here...They only have one agency here that does all the FC Licensing...Each agency here has a speciality, but they all work together somehow... They just recently made it that way last year but the Adoptions Coordinator (who is at the lead agency) told me that it won't be a huge problem..she says it actually could work in my favor in getting the kids in my home faster (In the event that we are a successful match) because I will licensed for FC first...Don't know how true that is, but since I have no precedence to base it on..I guess I'll take her word for it... Farrah

Plus if adopting out of state you need to follow the ICPC for an interstate adoption and that can take some time, paperwork can get lost, etc....luckily we know our State Rep here so he helped be a paper pusher which helped. Now we have to wait for the TPR to be granted before we can get custody of our Niece...that may be awhile depending upon if her mother fights TPR...which may happen. Her mother is in prison but eligible for parole in November which kinda scares us. Just hoping for the best for our Niece.