Foster/Adopt waiting to be matched

I am still here waiting and my wife and I are wondering when we should consider other options such as opening up ourselves to more risk and/or broadening our age range. We are trying not to let the wait get to us but it is hard when everyone around us either just had a baby or has a baby on the way. Even on here there has been quite a bit of celebrating. I guess the wind isn't blowing properly because we havent had any babydust blowing our way yet.

anilorak13ska - I hope your new path gets things moving along for you soon. Keep us posted!Dannie - we're all hoping the disclosure meeting goes well! Isn't waiting the worst after you've been chosen?! We're in a similar situation right now.Cris - discussing your options can lead you to situations you didn't realize you'd like in the first place. We increased slowly... started off wanting a boy 0-2 with no special needs, moved it to 0-5, said yes to one sibling, added special needs we'd be comfortable with, moved age range to 0-12, unspecified gender, etc, until we are now (over five years later) comfortable with a sib group of up to four children of either gender between the ages of 0-15 with some special needs. We explored a situation where there were 5 kids with a lot of special needs at one point. For us it's very situation specific. You also need to make sure that you don't get coerced into taking on more than you can handle and/or "settling" for a situation that is not a good fit out of desperation to parent. Hoping things go quickly for you!We had a meeting with our worker tonight to read over our home study. It's the first time we've had a chance to read it. I was actually flattered - she was kind to us. The child's worker will be telling our potential son about us this coming Monday. I sent along a letter (with pictures) for him introducing ourselves. Our worker is pushing the agency to let us meet him soon, despite all of the paperwork reviews they are in the midst of right now. :clap: I can't wait!!!!

I don't really understand how/where you sign up to be "waiting for a match"?? We are foster parents in NE. Who is it that is trying to find a match for you? Maybe NE is different? As far as we can tell there is no straight adoption from foster care unless you find a legally free older child on the photo listing yourself. There is only foster care and maybe someday you will have a placement that goes to adoption.

every state does it differently. In CA you can either join an agency that coordinates with different counties, or you can go through your county....I'm going through my county. There are three options of families that you can be here.....foster, concurrent placement, pre-adoptive placement. Foster--you are accepting children that are more than likely going back or to an adoptive placement, these parents rarely adopt (but they do on occasion) Concurrent--families are in to foster, however, they are concurrent placements because they would like to adopt if the child becomes available. They get matched with a child that will be in foster care that could go back to family or if not, they have already agreed that they will adopt this child should the plan change to adoption pre-adoptive homes--you are wanting to only adopt a child from foster care....you get matched from the adoptive matching team with a child that is heading towards TPR and current foster home does not want to adopt. the pre-adoptive home is what I am. So therefore, my caseworker has my profile with the matching team and I wait to hear about a match.

ncarol01 - Hello, and welcome! It is true that foster care sounds like a tough road, but isn't any road you take towards parenthood? Look at the road it took to get your DD!The wait cannot be predicted. It depends on the need in your area. Having said that, here's a trick that we used that apparently worked: After over 2 months of waiting for a placement (after getting licensed), we attended the orientation at the next county over. At first, we were told we didn't need to be there bc we couldn't be licensed in two places. But then we said, look, we're bilingual and open to newborns as well as Hispanic and multiracial kids. Within 2 weeks the new county had called us, but for two days I couldn't get back in touch with them.Lo and behold, they must have called our current county to inquire about transferring our license. Two days after the new county called us, our current county called us with two possible placements. One was a straight fostering situation of a 6 mo girl, and the other was a fost-adopt situation of 2 sibs, a 2.5 yo girl and her 4 mo brother.Believe it or not, even though we want to adopt, and even though we'd have sealed the deal with "one of each - a boy and a girl", we decided that a straight fostering situation was a better fit for us right now.We've had our FD for 12 days now, and we are convinced that we were crazy to think that we can handle a newborn! We're committed to Baby V for however long she is with us (and just in case this turns out to be the case, we would adopt her), but if/when she is RUed, we want to take only one child over the age of 1 year.I have also started to ponder the idea of an older child. Several months ago, we inquired about some 20 preschoolers on foster care photolistings, but we were not chosen for any of them. Speaking of which, surveying state/county photolistings may be the way for you to go if you want to adopt w/o the risk of foster care, but with the low expense of adopting from foster care. The only thing you haven't mentioned is the age range of the child you are hoping for. And yes, some special needs are to be expected, but I think a lot of them are listed as special needs in order to qualify for services. Various things that are considered special needs may not be a big deal to you and your family.Things like the child's ethnicity, age, and size of siblings are considered special needs. So are learning disabilities and developmental delays (which is super general, imho). And it doesn't hurt to inquire and once you have more info about a particular child, research the situation/condition to see if it is something you can handle.(Btw, just yesterday our county called us again to see if we were interested in taking in a teen and her baby as a respite placement for the weekend. So I'm telling you, we're on the radar now!)Good luck!Everyone - is anyone here waiting to be matched for an adoptive placement, but you've already had a foster placement in the past?

While it is true, most of the kids available for adoption do come with issues, there's still a chance you can get a child. Keep an eye on the website for waiting children and jump on them. We went into this to fost-adopt and are now foster parents to 2 great kids. problem is, they may not be adoptable. The state is trying to get them back with a relative. Definitely not what we signed up for. We've had them 3 months and they feel like our children. We were not able to have any of our own also, and thought this was the best route, short of speding 50k for a straight adoption. We were told when we got the call it was a strong adoption case so we took the placement. Now we're getting a different story. Be careful is the best advice I can give you. I don't want anyone to go through what I am going through. I don't know how I will ever be able to handle losing them. As for CW's.....Keep going up the ladder. Mine is horrible and I finally broke down and complained. This is too important for anyone not to be on top of it every step of the way. Good luck

Canadamom - thanks. I hope so too. Prettyboi - I'm so sorry to see that you and your dw are STILL waiting, and that the little boy wasn't the one for you. RE: photolistings - do you all have a private agency homestudy as well that you use to inquire about kids on photolistings? Bc our county will not send ours, and we've had some issues with our private agency and would prefer to not involve them again. (They took a retainer for social worker contact, and when I asked for a refund a few months later bc we thought we weren't going to be going that route anymore, they had used up almost 90% of it! Half was charged for emailing with US! So I am not trying to do that again, but if I must, I guess I'll send another retainer, only this time I won't follow up at all, and if the child's social worker is interested in us, they'll let us know. That's the only way I can think of to cut the costs. We also have a new foster parent coordinator, so I'll ask him about using the county's homestudy for photolisting inquiries. Any other suggestions?

Thanks for your reply and all the information that you shared with me. It is so good to hear other opinions and what they are doing. We are looking to adopt in the age range of 0-5, boy or girl (doesn't matter), possibly a sibling group (but no more than 2), and we will accept mild to moderate issues. I have thought about just using the state's site and try to find a child already free to adopt. It just seems like there's not many available in the younger age group that we'd like. Do you know how difficult it is to adopt from other state's foster care? I would think that the younger ones would go fast in any state so it would be unlikely for me to have much success with that. Thanks again for all your info!!! Carol

Hi Carol, Your criteria sound pretty wide to me! (You don't mention ethnicity of child you'd consider) While it's true that kids this age are often adopted within their own state, this isn't always the case. You can always inquire about kids in other states and they will sometimes tell you the child is not available for out of state due to needing to maintain bith family or foster family contact, but if there's no contact to be maintained, I don't think they necessarily look at the state, just the best matched family for the child.We have had the same three or four kids listed in our state's photo listing for at least 6 months, and one or two of them have since been adopted but they're still up. So we are heavily depending on other states' photo listings.Having said that, even adopt us kids, which lists kids from all states available for adoption into any state, sometimes goof up. We first started inquiring about older kids (ie. preschoolers) when we found a set of brothers on there. After getting more info on them, talking on the phone with the CW, and having our HS submitted, they THEN say that they won't place them out of state! We were so shocked and hurt - why put them on the interstate listing?! But flukes exist.I have a list of photolistings for various states/counties (some in need of being updated) if you're interested, PM me and I'd be happy to send it to you.Other than adopting directly from a photolisting, perhaps you can consider fost-adopting with the explanation to your dd that the child is just visiting? If they end up staying, great, but if not, your dd knew it was coming. I don't know first hand how I'd handle having a child in the home already. My experience is with our 4.5 yo niece, who knows we have a baby in the house and looks forward to seeing her, but she isn't with her 24/7 so it won't be so hard to see her go.I also have a disable father, who reasons at a child's level, and he is loving being a granddaddy to our FD (my mom watches her while I'm at work), but is aware that she's not here to stay and asks periodically how much longer we have her. I know he'll be sad when she goes, but he knows she's here temporarily.Either way, I wouldn't expect the process to go very quickly, at least it has been super slow for us. But short of spending a fortune on a priavate agency adoption, that's what we're looking at, eh? :)

I got licensed in October and so far I've only had one call which didn't work out. I've heard that placements are slow right now and I know that being single probably puts me lower on the list. It doesn't help that I can only take one gender because of number of bedrooms. Both me and my licensing worker feel that I should look at girls only because of that. I'm okay with it taking awhile but I still get anxious to be a mom, even if its only temporary.

[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Hi everyone!

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[/FONT][FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Our worker called to tell us that we have an interview for the sib group of two from down south, but we aren't too sure about some of their issues. Then I asked the worker about the info she had promised us about the local child, because I hadn't received anything yet(right before Christmas holidays so I completely understand). Our worker mentioned the mental health issues in the birth parent history again, and I reminded her that it was not an issue for us. She was delighted (I think she'd forgotten that we're open to a history of parental mental health issues). She sent the info to me, we reviewed it, and we're interested and asking for more info! Our worker was very excited because all of the other families they approached declined!!![/FONT][FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]

[/FONT][FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]S is 8 months older than our youngest - he is also in SK. He has ADHD (is on meds) and possibly ODD, as well as a possible attachment disorder. In all, he presents a lot like our middle dd who has ADHD. If he gets bored, he pushes people's buttons to see what will happen. [/FONT][FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]As a side note, I was teasing our worker about whatever would she do without us if we actually ever moved to adoption. She laughed and told me that our adoption file is thicker than most kids' protection files. We're special, alright.[/FONT][FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Dawn H.

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Just curious if any of you with really long waits feel your age has anything to do with it? I am really wanting to adopt again and recent health issues within our family have put everything on hold. I am very frustrated by this myself, as I know there to be age limits and age bias in International adoptions...and time ticks on . BUT... I am putting everything in His hands that the timing and everything else will be for the best for all involved in our family. That said, a friend we had MAPP classes with years ago, is wanting to adopt again. She has children college aged and older (out of the home/married) and she recently told me she feels passed over by her CW! The excruciating wait time and the numerous talks of the "best match" by her CW have been going on a few years now! Being that it is not a private infant adoption and too many children in state care are also waiting she cannot understand the hold up. They are a wonderful family without the responsibility of young children's needs to take care of (as I said her kids are grown and they are virtual empty nesters) she is a SAHM, and other than her age she cannot see why it would be that challenging to match them to a young child she can devote all her attention to. I would refer her here to post and ask away, but she is not interested in posting to forums. I always check back here on the adoption forums for updates on international adoptions. But I figured I'd ask. Also curious if it is more difficult by age state to state. I recently saw here a couple in their 50's were matched in Fl, but that was posted in 2007 and she never posted again! Any input would be appreciated. Thank you.

We're in our mid to late 40s and there hasn't been an issue. I know hopeful AP in there 50s and there's no issue. Unfortunately, there's a tremendous need. It does vary state to state.

I am glad to hear for you, there is no judgement of age like that. I think the 40's are still relatively young (also depending what age your are looking to adopt or have adopted). They are in the 50's (open to many variables age / race) and they are not even being offered preteens or teens. I have no comfort to offer her! Anyone else in Florida that has adopted children from foster care (babies - teens) in their later 40's-50's? I am starting to believe they are passing over older parents leaving children to languish in Foster care.OR maybe it is her case worker that is age-judgemental. She has voiced that she feels they want them to give up and walk away. I find that completely heartbreaking for them AND the potential child/ren they could be giving loving homes to! Again thank you Lotusmama! Any input from over 45-50 State of Florida Adoptive parents??? Any input regarding states that allowed adoption into the 50's? Maybe they can look into interstate, I know those children are often adopted by the time out of staters inquire. I just don't know how to advise / help / support my friend :-( Thanks ahead of time!!!

Trying to bump this up? Any input in this area of older parent adoption?