Pre-Adoptive Placement - how does it work?

I think every county is different. I have had two preadoptive placements (P and J). Both were kids who were in foster care for over a year, and when the county started actively pursuing TPR, they asked the current foster families if they would be interested in adopting. P's foster parents said no- he was 10, and had a lot of special needs, and their 6 year old biotwins were catching up to him developmentally which made for a lot of stress and friction between them. My county has a meeting every Tuesday morning where cw staff their hard to place kids- P was mentioned at that meeting, and I my cw suggested I might be interested, so I got the call. He lived with me for over a year before he went to live with an aunt out of state he hadn't seen in several years (It was the right decision for him long term, but heartbreaking nonetheless). J's foster family was older (60's I think) and have been foster parents for over 30 years without ever adopting- it is just not what they do. He was first moved to the foster home that has his brothers- the hope being they could all be adopted together. But once he got there they realized there were a lot of dysfunctional patterns between the siblings and behaviors in all of them that only came out when they were together, and that foster family decided they could not adopt all of them. So then he was also staffed at a Tuesday morning meeting, and I had just called my cw the day before to remind her I had an empty nest that needed filling, so she mentioned me. And here we are! TPR has been completed, and his case is supposed to move to adoption next month! When they are looking for a prospective adoptive home, in my experience, a LOT has to do with which foster families are on their minds, so make sure to get to know all the cw. Here at least, they always try in county first and I had several preplacement visits with both of them. I did not officially agree to the placement until after at least 2-3 meetings for either kid.