Tell Me About Your Foster Care Adoption Process

I have enjoyed our decision to adopt from the foster care system. One bit of advice I would give is to find a worker who really advocates for you as well as the child. Our first worker took almost 18 months to finish our homestudy. We were a basic family with no issues, but due to her caseload, she could never get to it. I called the branch manager and had our worker removed and we were given our current worker. We love working with her and find her to be on our side. In Oregon you submit a homestudy, the child's worker chooses 3 families to take to committee. Then a committee of adoption professionals picks the family. We were asked to go to committee for a 15 mo old AA boy. He is beautiful. We will find out in 2 weeks if we are his family. It's gut wrenching, but so was trying to get pregnant. Really think about the foster care system. There are some wonderful kids who are not broken in the system. As a teacher, I see these kids daily and they are wonderful.

My hubby and I are now in the process of adopting a little boy whom we've fostered since birth. He is bi-racial and almost 2 years old. We are not having a great experience as of yet. We've gone to the first adoption class last Saturday and have two more to attend. The class per say wasn't bad, it's the communication with our worker that we are having problems with. For some reason, unbeknownst to us, she has treated us like children since we started interacting with her. Unkind messages left on the answering machine, letters that belittle our intellegence ect.... I'm trying not to feel that it's because of the race card (our little boy being more white then black in hue) but I'm getting that feeling in my stomach that they really don't want to see this happen, but unless they prove that we are unfit parents for him, somehow, they won't be able to stop it. We have two grown children of our own, 19/in second year of college, and 18/senior year in highschool, heading to college afterwards, so I don't understand what the problem may be, also we foster a special needs little girl that we also plan on adopting, she being half black and half Spanish. I plan on talking to her and seeing how we can change the the tone of our relationship to make this experience better for all of us. (I've left a message on her phone to convey my intentions) If that is not possible I will move towards changing caseworkers. The foster care system has many children that need love and a family of their own, I'm sure if you go this route you won't be disappointed...God's blessing on you however you choose!

I'm not AA, but we've adopted toddlers from the foster system. In our state, too, it does vary a little bit from county to county, cw's, some judges, indivdiual cases and their CASA/GAL's, etc. Our state has the same process for all the state foster care system adoptions, but given that some counties are very rural with less population and some are very urban with high population density there are some variables and differences.We did not foster to adopt, but did straight adoption. (We did also foster some children, but we did not adopt any of the children we fostered.) We adopted 4 children ages 2 and under. We were told this would be difficult, that we'd have a long wait, that the foster parents usually adopted the younger kids.... All of which can happen, but didn't in our case(s). For the most part, the foster parents were foster families who specialized in caring for medically fragile infants; drug addicted, generally. We were open to any race, mild mental retardation, drug addicted (fetal alcohol), and children younger than our youngest child.For our first adoption we were matched after waiting for about 9 months, with several committees not choosing our family along the way. (That was really tough!!) This child was 2 years old at placement.Our second adoption we were matched after looking for about 6 months, but it was our first committee so was pretty much 'straight out of the box' for that one. That child was just over a year old at placement.Our third adoption was more complicated and longer because we withdrew from consideration for two committees, took a brief hiatus in the middle due to the death of a close family member, and then were not matched at the first committee we went to, but were for the second. So #3 took, all told, over a year. This child was also just over a year old.Our 4th adoption was a family member (from foster care) and was pretty streamlined, taking about 3 or 4 months from the time we talked with the child's cw about adoption until the child arrived in our home. This child was just under a year old at placement.All of our children were legally free when we were matched, except #4 and that court date was just after the child came to us. Our children are a mixture of races/ethnicities. (They're all wonderful children who are simply beautiful. And I'm not just saying that because I'm their mom!! :evilgrin:)

I LOVE this quote. Yash just summed it up very nicely. :arrow: We are licenced for foster-adoption through a private agency that places children for our State. There is no cost for foster-adopt families, except for court and attorney fees to finalize the adoption. We picked up our FD from the hospital when she was 4 days old. Being placed with an infant usually means there is some degree of legal risk. Parents have to be given a chance to work a case plan. And the State will look for a relative placement. Our FD has been with us for 4 months, and we have a very long road ahead of us. When and if she leaves, she'll take a piece of our hearts with her. But we still wouldn't trade our time with this precious little angel for anything. :love: Good luck with your journey!

I never expected to adopt. I was a member of the same church as the Birth mother and her children. I tried to help by becoming a foster parent for her kids to keep them together. The family was not re-unified, other family members couldn't get custody of the children, and we didn't want the children separated so we adopted the children. In addition another young person was being fostered in our home at the same time so since this child was available for adoption as well, we adopted that child along with the others. It has been my experience, that most of the time in these types of adoptions the children have suffered so much that they have significant emotional, behavioral, and some cognitive or learning problems. But if you are committed to working at making a family for these types of children and have a good support system, you will be blessed by them and be a blessing to them.

It's been almost a year since I first posted on this blog form. We lost my husband's mother and grandmother in February and June, respectively. Although we are still grieving and healing from these losses we are ready to move forward with starting our family. We are attending a foster to adopt orientation in December. And, by reading all the posts I know that we are in for a whirlwind trying to foster adopt, so we just ask for words of encouragement and any advice you have to share. Thanks!

I'm so sorry for your losses. Enjoy the journey and welcome to the rollercoaster!!!

Good luck on your journey! It can be a roller coaster, no doubt. But we had a very good experience and ended up adopting a beautiful baby boy who is now almost 2. We are currently waiting for a second child through foster-adopt. For us, the difficulties in the process were worth it a hundred times over in the end. I hope your experience is as positive as ours was.

Thank you for the words of encouragement and good luck on your second foster to adopt!

I finally attended a foster to adopt orientation - there were no surprises. The social worker reiterated that the goal of foster care is reunification and that children in our county are generally reunited with their birth family w/in a year of being placed in foster care. They recommended special needs adoption (sibling groups and older children) because the parents' rights for many of these children have already been terminated. I know that I will struggle to return a child to their birth family after a year of parenting and I am not ready to parent more than one child. So, we met with the infant adoption program w/the same agency. On average they do five or less infant adoptions per year - but there is no guarantee this route either because an infant could be placed in our home for several months - we would have physical custody while the birth mom retains legal custody. And, while we wait for a court date to finalize the adoption BM could change her mind. So, in my frustration I began to research Ethiopian adoptions many of which are under investigation. So, I have to do some serious soul searching and will have to take a leap of faith knowing that my heart may be broken a couple of times.

Mizsamone, when we first attended info sessions about foster to adopt, they were very discouraging. Even though we were hoping to adopt a child as old as five years old, and an AA male, they made it sound like it was very poor odds--any child that age who was headed to adoption would likely be adopted by their foster parents, and if they weren't already headed to adoption, the risk would be too great that they would be reunified. Yadda yadda. We lived in a large city with a majority AA population. I just knew what they were saying was wrong, statistically. Every day, babies are being born to women who've already lost custody and rights to their existing children, and TPR is pretty darn likely, even though it will take 18 months to happen. Also, not every single foster home is in the position to adopt their foster child when it looks like TPR will happen. Even if 99% of them are, I figured we could adopt the 1% kid. So, even with the agency saying "Not very likely", we went ahead. We were contacted about a prospective placement of a 2 year old even before the homestudy/foster parent certification process was finished. That match did not happen. A month or so later, we were contacted about another little guy, and that one also did not happen. The same month, they called us about a boy who was 1. Although he had just entered foster care, they felt he was extremely likely to be TPR'd when the date rolled around, and we felt comfortable with the odds of that once we heard about the situation. As they predicted, TPR happened ASAP once the clock had run out. So, our agency's "not likely" meant that we waited less than two full months from getting our foster care certification and adoption homestudy done to meeting our boy. The key for us was knowing what to ask about the child's situation so we could gauge how likely TPR was ourselves. We made up a list of questions to ask about factors affecting TPR based on advice we got here on the forums. Also important was feeling that our worker really liked us and understood our level of risk-aversion, so SHE did the screening and only approached us about "slam-dunks", or situations that were as close to slam-dunks as possible given that nothing is ever certain in foster-adopt.

Mizsamone, My experience with foster care and mapp classes was that from the orientation on, they tried to discourage us. I think it was because they only wanted those truly commited families to move forward. Throughout the weeks of training several couples dropped out. Each time I went to a training session I heard more horror stories and became more disilusioned. We did hang in there though and I was placed with an 8 week old BR girl even before I got my lisense and 2 weeks later with a 13 month old CC boy. They were our first two placements and we adopted both of them. Also, did you know there were agencies that have "available situations" ? I've not adopted that way, but I have seen listings where they publish the costs up front, often they are under $20,000. Linny has adopted through agencies this way a couple of times. Remember you have your $10,000 tax credit as well. Everything will come together for you......your baby will find his way home. Sincerely, Saj

Pepperminty and Saj-Thanks for the response - it sounds like foster care agencies all tell the same story. I think I will attend the PRIDE classes so I will at least have this under my belt. This will give us time to continue to research and ask questions since the training and home study must be done before we can get a placement.Thanks!

A friend referred me to the Children's Center in Detroit. I spoke with a foster care licensing specialist and their program sounds very promising - she indicated that infants are available through foster care because mothers who have a history of their children being removed will often have their parental rights terminated on new births. If you have any information about this agency please PM me. Thanks!

Wow - it has been a long time coming but I think I finally found the agency that will help to complete our family. We attended an orientation on March 3 and are scheduled to attend PRIDE training March 20 and 27. We will complete the entire 16 hours over two Saturdays and after that it will take 3-4 mos to complete our foster license application. This is the first time that I am feeling confident that we are truly on our way. I am so ready to be a mommy!:clap: