ICPC question

So, if I understand correctly, after 6 months the legal part of the case could move to MA and we'd need someone who knows the laws in MA. I don't think they could design a more complicated system if they tried! It has taken 4 months just to get the home study started! I hope it goes a little quicker now. I was told that MA could license us as foster parents just for this one child - which should be faster than being licensed to foster in general. I hope that is true. Thanks again!

NO the legal part of the case will NEVER move to your state until they get a court order to move jurisdiction and that hinders upon both states agreeing to that...Custody will stay in the sending states until that time. Some states require the child to be in your home for 6 months before finalizing an adoption and I believe that is what the previous poster meant. The court hearings still are handled for our niece in Idaho....every 6 months there is a permanency hearing. When you get to the point of the adoption you may need an attorney in your state to oversee it. I wouldn't get an attorney until you are at the adoption stage...and that is 6 months after placement in your home. We are hiring an attorney now in Florida...to help with the adoption subsidy request and the ICPC process to finalize the adoption. Since they are moving the jurisdiction here to Florida we can go in front of a Florida Judge and finalize instead of flying to Idaho to see the Judge. And if you want to adopt the child then make sure you make that completely clear. They will send an ICPC request for an adoption home study (they need to specify that to get the correct home study done once the 6 months is up). If they send the incorrect request then they will have to start ALL over again and that can take time. We were also licensed by Florida for a "specific child" with our nieces name on the license. It was much easier being family and much quicker...it took us about 3 months total to be licensed. Then the child will be moved to you once the ICPC request is sent and received and accepted by your state. Here is a good website on the ICPC process:[URL="http://icpc.aphsa.org/Home/home_news.asp"]AAICPC | an :: APHSA :: Affiliate[/URL]

Thanks for clarifying. At this point in the case, he is only foster because he only came into foster care in Oct when mom went MIA. The alleged dad is in jail and they are going to do a DNA test (we are skeptical he is the dad. if he isn't then there is no way to know who dad is since mom is MIA). So, until the kid is in care long enough for the state to claim "abandonment" he is a foster child. What we are trying to avoid is the state of PA moving him to us, giving us legal custody and basically walking away. We don't want to later have to deal with mom coming back and trying to get custody back (not very likely... but you never know!) So, in the perfect world - he would come to us as a foster placement, we wait until the state can TPR (for abandonment assuming mom never shows up) and then we could adopt. Knowing what I know about foster care - if he is with us as family as a foster placement if they do TRP on the parents I'm pretty sure we'd be first in line to adopt (even if we later had to do an adpotion home study). At this point, my husband and I agree that if he comes to us we have to be prepared for him to stay forever even if he comes at first as "foster" but as soon as possible we'd want permancy for him and for us that would mean adoption. I've heard too many people have a hard time when they are only given custody. But we also know that if mom shows up in the 11th hour they will still give her a chance to work her case plan. But if mom does show up she has 3 outstanding warrents and is to go back to jail... which probably makes working a case plan a bit more complicated! When we started the ICPC paperwork in OCt we did it with hopes that mom would show up, would work a plan, and that we wouldn't even have the baby moved to us b/c we are out of state and we wanted baby kept close to mom (which would be best if he was ever going back to mom). However, since mom continues to be MIA we are moving ahead with the ICPC and when it is all done then the state of PA and we can decide if it is in the baby's best interest to move him to our house. He is currently in a very nice foster home (we met the foster mom) but they are foster only. I feel like if we are getting into this then we need to get in early becasue the sooner he is with us the easier it will be on him (he is now only 7 month old) and on us. thanks again!

You know, I hear everyone on this site talk about not wanting custody because then they have problems and can't TPR or that they won't be able to TPR and I just don't buy it. I'm sure that there are tons of advantages to going through the foster system and disadvantages to not going through the foster system. But we never had J as a 'foster' placement and I see now, as I've become acquainted with so many stories on this site, that we actually had a much simpler case because we did it that way. So I will share roughly what we did, just FYI: CPS in Oklahoma wouldn't get off their rears and so we had no choice except to hire an attorney and figure out how to get her out. That was the hard part, getting her out of the house. With an attorney's advice we were able to do that, and we gained full legal custody. We brought her to where we live; Tennessee. Moving her was no big deal because we had custody. We never even had to do a homestudy (although I think homestudies are very important and think that one should have been ordered). Biomom had no 'right' to visitation or phone calls unless a judge granted it after she petitioned for it. There were no reunification services, no free legal help, no transportation, etc. If she had wanted to visit she would have had to make reasonable effort towards it, including coming to a location of our choosing and following our rules, which would have included a drug test. She didn't get sued for child support and we didn't have to request it, so J was abandoned financially by her bio with no problems. We had to follow our attorney's advice very closely because we had no SW to guide us, but we were able to file for TPR ourselves. We let as much time slip by as we could before biomom started making threats to show up at our house. We filed the petition. We terminated her rights and adopted J. It took one year and two days until we finalized and cost us about $8,000 in fees paid directly to my lawyer. Obviously we didn't get a subsidy. So we were out some other money for expenses related to taking in a child. My niece who has J's siblings is doing the same thing. I originally learned that this was an option from a woman that I knew who had worked for CPS and had adopted two girls who weren't relatives without CPS intervention or assistance. Now, I am NOT saying that this is the best route. I am only saying that folks don't seem to know that CPS doesn't have a monopoly on TPR. And that I think it's important to know and understand your options in order to make the right decision for YOUR family. I can think of plenty of situations where this wouldn't be the best route (e.g., Florida and Idaho are not close and the plane tickets back and forth could have cost more than our lawyer). But my point is that it is not the only route. Amy

Yes, you can do an adoption outside the foster care system but it will cost LOTS of money. We hired an attorney in Idaho to get our niece from there to our home and it costs us about 500.00. Alot of the legal work was done by the CASA in her case which saved us money. To adopt her now it's not costing us anything...the agency is reimbursing our attorney for her fees and we don't have to pay a dime. Plus we get an adoption subsidy (which includes 2k of travel expenses) and a foster care stipend each month until she is adopted and the subsidy kicks in. She'll have medicaid til 18 and a 4 yr college education paid for (and that isn't cheap to do ourselves). I guess it depends on what you want to do. You can shell out alot of money to do it outside the foster care system but alot of us don't have that type of money. Our adoption will be final in a couple months so it took us less then a year to get to this point...and it cost us only 500.00 total.

Amy, You are right, you can file a private petition in our state to get a child removed and can get TPR that way also but all the expense falls to you. Back to the OP, When I was referring to the 6 months, that is just the general guideline for when the sending state can ask for release of custody but usually there is a guardianship or adoption that takes place. Also, if children are placed with their own parents in another place, sometimes custody can be released after 6 months to that parent. That 6 mo. timeframe doesn't account for the time parents should be working a plan or whatever. The sending state is still responsible for making a plan for the child and following through. The case never transfers legally to the new state.

My understanding of legal custody is that the parent(s) would have to show a judge, (esp. if the history is that they lost their children to the state system), that they are able to care and provide for their children. Going before a judge is not a free service. My cousin, (whose children are in the process of being ICPC'd to me), is a long term drug user, who is currently homeless, and tested positive for her drug of choice while in the hospital having a baby..., right now I am not too worried about her getting custody. I am worried about minor family members in foster care when there is family willing to care for them. Their mother got straight enough to tell the courts she wanted them with us, perhaps one day she will get straight enough to get her life together and keep it together. She is my relative too, and I wish nothing but success for her. I am just so upset about the children. They are the truest victims.

Amy, if I am correct J was not in foster care when you filed to get custody? The baby we are trying to "get" was removed by CPS and placed in foster care ... so at this point I'm not sure we can go "around" them. I know that for many people custody works out very well. In this case, I think we would rather have the TPR done and adopt than have custody because it will help not only with not having to worry about mom trying to get child back in the future but also keep other family members from helping mom try to get child back in the future. If mom gets clean then I have NO problem allowing her some access to her child in the future but I want to be in control of that process. This situation is creating much drama in the family and I think being able to adopt would "seal the deal" on who is the actual parent of the child and give us absolute control in the future. Anyway, for now we are still just trying to get the ICPC done, then deal with family fall-out (some are not very happy we are doing this and esentially want the child "out of sight-out of mind"), then see if PA approves the plan for him to move. thanks foe all the help!

tsv4- Within the jurisdictions involved in our case you can go around the system once a child has been placed in your custody and the file has been closed with the state. My main point really was to let everyone know that all hope is not lost if you were to ever have CPS dump custody on you and close the case. Good luck getting that baby home soon! Amy

Amy, thanks for the information. we will keep it in mind! As family, we are just trying to do right by this little guy. We were foster parents open to taking in "strangers" and it makes me crazy there is a family member in foster care and it is so complicated to "get" him. He is now about 7 months old and needs permancy soon. we just hope that logic prevails! thanks again!

Yeah tell me about it. It took us 11 months to get approval to move our niece here. Don't expect things to happen too quickly!

In mid October they told is it would be 60-90 days to do the ICPC. It STILL isn't done. They are just STARTING the home study in MA. So, looks a lot more like 6 months which is sort of what I had suspected and which is why we started the process the moment the mom went MIA. If we had waited 6 months for her to show up then by the time the ICPC was done it would have been 1 year! the system can sure work as slow as molassas in Januray. We'll see what happens next!

I just found this ICPC website and thought I'd share...I'm not sure what use if any it may be to you, but there is some good info. [url=http://icpc.aphsa.org/Home/home_news.asp]AAICPC | an :: APHSA :: Affiliate[/url]

It took us 11 months for the ICPC...so it's not a fast process....Get anyone involved you can such as your state reps or the governors office. That was what we had to do and even then it took along time!

Thanks to all for thier help/advice. Right now I'm holding out to talk to the SW today who is doing our home visit as part of the home study to see how long it will take to get this part done. I know the SW in PA who is managing the baby's case is very supportive us us trying to get the baby into our care. It just seems that the paperwork part drags. It didn't help that the first SW in PA filled in the origianal ICPC paperwork in Oct but left off critical info so it got sent back. she had never done an ICPC before. The new SW seems more "on top"of things. This sure would have been a lot easier if we hadn't moved b/c we'd would have already been licensed foster parents and the home study part would have been done. but since we moved in June we have to "start from scratch". I'm pretty sure we won't have much trouble passing the home study. Then we'll have to meet with the SW in PA and figure out how to proceed forward. Ideally, I'd like a meeting in PA with the SW, the baby's lawyer and the CASA (if he has one which I don't think he does), and maybe a lawyer for us (I just want someone there on "our side" who knows what legal questions to ask - not to be adversarial. Right now no one seems to be opposed to us having the baby come into our care. but i'm not a lawyer so I don't want to forget any questions) so I can get all the answers at one time and everyone hears the same thing about the case and what will happen next. The 6 month case review/hearing should be coming in about March/april and I'm hoping that the home study will be done by then and placing the baby with us can be part of the next 6 month plan. Thanks again!