Hello everyone!

Hi Danielle, welcome! :flower: A lot of the posters on our home study support thread are adopting through foster care so you might want to hit them up for some advice as well. I'm adopting through foster care (doing straight adoption, not foster-to-adopt) and so far it's been an interesting journey. My CW is supposed to be writing my home study right now so DH and I are basically twiddling our thumbs and waiting for her to finish. One thing I can tell you is that it takes A LOT of waiting! :arrow: Good luck and post with us often.

Thanks!! Thats the same thing we are wanting to do, the straight adoption. I will be sure to post. I got a few phone calls today and now im waiting on a CW from my area to get ahold of me. Suppose to be within 3 business days! I cant wait! My husband and i are CLEANING everything out this weekend so we are ready for the call and as soon as they can come out!

Welcome to the adoption ride :clap: We to are adopting through the foster system also (straight adoption) it is exciting! We are just waiting for our match right now. If you have specific questions ask... there are a lot of helpful willing people here for support. Let me know if I can answer anything for you

Thanks! I do have a question. We don't exactly make all the money in the world. Is that going to be a problem? Also my husband is in the army I was reading about that and I read somewhere the military will cover our legal fees and I think give us a certain amount a month to help with expenses? Anyone here familiar with that?

you just need to be able to prove you can make enough to support a family. You DO NOT need to be rich to parent a child by any means and regarding the amy: Eligible Soldiers serving on active duty may be reimbursed a maximum of $2,000 per child for qualifying expenses related to the adoption of children under age 18, up to a maximum of $5,000 per calendar year for multiple adoptions. Also you may want to look into how your state goes about subsudies for adoption. Don't worry this is the kind of questions that they will go over during your training

I love when it doesnt post my replys. lolThanks! We have recieved a few phone calls today, we have been referred to a case worker in our area and are waiting on a phone call to get things set up. :) I'll be sure to ask her about those things when i speak to her. Im so excited!

When you are adopting from foster care, it isn't the military that will pay the legal costs and send you a monthly stipend to care for the child in your home, it's the state. While he child is a foster child (which is any time before the adoption is finalized), the state will cover the expected costs of that child's care, a well as providing Medicaid health insurance for the child. Now, the amount does differ by state - some states think it takes $200 per month to care for a child, some think it takes $500. So definately check into that for your state and county. Also, the state knows that it costs less money to get a child adopted than it does to continue to pay for that child's stay in foster care. So most states are willing to cover most (or all) the legal costs of getting that foster child adopted. Sometimes that's only if the child is special needs, but the definiton of that is pretty liberal. Being a minority or being over a certain age is usually enough to qualify the child as special needs. Sometimes the legal costs are covered by reimbursing the adoptive parents, rather than paying the costs as they occur. States usually reimburse up to $2,000 or so of "non recurring costs" - onetime things like finalization costs or the cost o printing the new birth certificate. In my state, the adoptive parents are responsible for approximately $250 of the legal costs of finalizing the adoption, and we get that back when it's finished. Now, the military does have some programs that I don't know about. So it's possible they'd help with legal costs or something like that, but my point is they won't have to, because chances are there won't be any for them to cover. The state does it for almost everybody. Good luck!

Wow thanks! With my husband being active duty military, we have 100% medical coverage, im not sure our dental, i think its 80% so im not worried about having to deal with medicaid. Thank you for the information though! Does anyone know generally how long it takes to adopt a foster child? We arent going to foster to adopt, just straight adopt. We want a child, boy or girl from 3 to 5. No serious disabilities as we already have 2 young children and i dont think i would be able to give the amount of attention that the child would need.

There will still be a time before the adoption is finalized where you are not likely to be able to add the child to your health insurance, though. So you may have to deal wth Medicaid whether you like it or not. While your insurance is likely to allow the child to be added right away (because he or she has been "placed for adoption" with you), the state sometimes does not like the child to change doctors at the beginning of a placement - it means that they have fewer ways of checking up on your care of the child. Not saying it's always like that, just saying not to count on being able to put the child on your insurance right away, and saying that you should pay attention to Medicaid information even if you hope to never need it. Well, this one depends on the season, the phase of the moon, and your caseworker's favorite color! In other words, nobody is going to be able to predict the time you will spend waiting. Here's a quick and short timeline of how it will likely work. The type of child who will enter foster care, and the time that he or she will enter, is not predictable. And it's from that pool of children that all potential children you may consider will be drawn from. Then whether the child's parents will do what is necessary to get their child back is unpredictable. Then whether relatives can take the child is unpredictable. If the child is still in the system after all those, he is usually about two years older than when he entered foster care. Next the caseworkers will line up an adoptive family before the bio family's rights are terminated. To start with, the foster parents who are caring for him will have the first chance to adopt him. If they pass, this is when you are likely to hear about the child, if it's your worker or agency that is in charg of the child's case. The number of adoptive parents who will either submit their homestudies to be considered for him/her, or the number of adoptive families whose workers will submit homestudies on their behalf, is unpredictable. The type of child you have described is going to be fairly popular. After all that, the child's workers take time (weeks to a month or two) to wade through all the possible familes for the child and pick one. Of course you hope to be the one picked. This is when you will meet the child, read his file, and be sure you agree with the match. If you do, visits will begin. Eventualy the child will spend more and more time with you, and be transitioned to live in your home instead of the foster home. This schedule of visits and transition can take a couple weeks to a few months, and depend on the caseworker, the foster family, you, and other interveing issues like whether the child should be moved in time to meet a school start date, for instance. Somewhere during that the termination hearings will proceed. That can take any number of weeks or months, depending on the court calendar in your area, the number of times the bio parents appeal, etc. Then your state has a minimum number of months the child will have to remain in your home before you can finalize. Foster care caseworkers are not known for their speed, and often don't submit the paperwork for adoption until the last minute. Then that requires another court date, which depends on the court calendar, etc. By this time it is anywhere from 6 months to a year or two since the child moved in with you. You can see the points at which the timeline can vary, and how the time can add up! It sounds overwhelming, doesn't it? But if you have a good worker, it'll go fairly smoothly. You'll know where in the process everything is, and you'll know what comes next. Kind of like a pregnancy, it takes 9 months plus to conceive and birth a child, but it proceeds along a normal course and you don't go insane because of that. If you have a bad caseworker, it won't be so easy. So hope for a good one! Hope that helps!