County vs. agency Foster/Adopt

Here's how it was basically explained to me when I first started: Both the county and foster agencies certify foster families. If a family is directly with the county, you get a slightly higher per diem (daily rate); however, the workers have a large caseload and aren't as responsive as one would like at times. THey don't provide much hands on assistance with transportation, therapy, bio visits, etc. And yes, of course kids come directly into the county office for placement, so they always try to contact their families first and offer them first chance. However, the counties don't normally have enough families, thus start calling agencies telling agencies about the kid(s) that just came into care and then those agencies start calling their families. The first one to response with a willingness to take the child(ren) and that has a profile that seems to fit ok with the child(ren) get the kids. Now, those families that are licensed through the agency get a slightly less per diem rate BUT the caseworkers have a MUCH SMALLER case load and can provide a lot more hands on assistance. In our case, we have a 24 hr cell phone hotline, plus our caseworker provides visit, DR, therapy, etc transportation. I get my questions/concerns answered via email, phone, in person, much faster. Plus our agency works with several local counties (at least 4), so we get phone calls for kids from 4 counties instead of just 4. It all depends on what works best for your family. Since my DH and I both work fulltime, the agency assistance was more important than $2 more a day. I would call the county and local agencies (SWAN can send you a list of agencies). Talk with the recruitment folks and see which one will meet your needs. many agencies have informational nights - it is definitely worth attending. When you start calling agencies, ask them they types of kids they mainly have for referral (race, sex, ages, etc). Select the one that best fits with your family. Good luck!!

i agree only here our agency pays more than the county, and i think the surrounding counties also. but then again, different agencies here have different per diems also. we do get faster responses from our agency workers, sometimes. it depends on which one you are working with. i think ours have about 13 kids apiece on their loads. i have found some of them are not helpful at all and hope each time we get placed we get a good one. some of them are also better at helping out when you need transport and such, but i try not to bug them because i appreciate the good ones and want to make their jobs easy and the bad ones are useless so i don't bother asking unless i really need it. we both work from home so fortunately we don't need help too much. anyway, i like that you can get kids from various counties also. but i think our agency gets mostly older kids.