More Questions...

1. When a child is placed in your home for foster/adopt, are you able to rename the child? I know it can't be done legally until the adoption is finalized. If we are looking at children ages 0-2, can we call them by a name of our choice? Not sure about this...someone else can probably answer this better than I can... 2. If we are requesting one child or siblings ages 0-2 of either sex, what are things we need to have ready? Clothing, diapers, bottles? My licensing worker told me I needed to have an age appropriate bed and appropriate bedding for as many children as I wanted to be licensed for before the second homestudy visit. I am taking in girls 0-6...(I have bunkbeds, a toddler bed, 2 cribs and a playpen with a bassinet...HOWEVER I only had up the crib and my bunkbeds, when she came-I was blessed with all that furniture for free!- There is no way I would have been able to buy all that) If you are going with ages 0-2, You may want to get one of those cribs that converts to a toddler bed....They will only license you for as many beds as you have ready (Or at least that is how they do it in Duval County) As far as clothing, bottles, etc... you don't have to have it during the time of your homestudy...but I wouldn't wait until I got a placement to get things that you will know that you need like bottles or sippy cups and a few outfits...From what I here you don't always get a lot of notice before a placement comes and for me personally if I had not received and purchased stuff over time...I WOULD NOT BE ABLE to go out and buy all the stuff that a child needs all at once. I have heard many people say the kids come with nothing but the clothes on their backs and that they only get a $50-$100 emergency voucher and we all know that isn't gonna buy much....so I started collecting and buying things SLOWLY over time...because by me being single and having only one income, I CAN'T go out and spend hundreds of dollars at one time... I THANK GOD I was given A LOT of stuff (Again I am truly blessed) I have a whole closet full of clothes.. I was given strollers, formula, toys and much much more and what I wasn't given I was able to find for a fairly reasonable price. 3. Will they tell me what all needs to be done around our house before the homestudy? My licensing worker gave me a list of everything that had to been done for the homestudy visit AND I received a list of what needed to be done for the health inspection in my MAPP class. Most of the stuff you will probably already have in place like smoke detectors....They don't even check everything that is on the list either..the big things are having your cleaners and medicines locked up, refrigerator & freezer temperature, hot water temperature, smoke detectors, fire extinguisher and that you have age appropriate beds in a bedroom.... 4. I work from home and am not supposed to have children in the home while I am working unless I have someone else here watching them. Realistically, I can do my work with a child here and they would never know the difference. But would they contact my employer to verify I can have children here while working? Not sure about this...but my guess is no...the only contact they had with my employer is when they sent them the reference letter to sign and that was through the mail...they didn't call anyone...If they do and your employer or DCF has a problem wth it....(I'm not sure of how you feel about daycare), but a daycare subsidy is provided for all foster kids in the state of Florida