Foster-to-Adopt Placements

My advice is to view each placement, not as a future adoption, but as a child in need of love for the moment. You need to have the child for at least 6 months before you can adopt anyway, so in those first months just expect reunification to happen. The child will benefit from your love even if they end up going back, so it's not time wasted. As foster parents, we are technically supposed to supposed to support RU and work toward that end. Adoption is only to be a last resort. A lot of times you will get a feel for the case in the first few months. And much depends on your cw.

Are you getting licensed to foster too or just becoming SNAP certified. If you are doing SNAP only you should be matched with a child already TPRd like from the photolisting. Or you may get a call on placements that they are getting ready to list on website. If you are looking for young placement then most likely it will be foster/adopt situation. You'll be placed with child that they "think" has a high chance of TPR. But it will be at best a concurrent plan of RU/adoption. We were already FP for nearly a year and were only placed with situations that they thought would be RU. Once we became FP that were SNAP approved we were placed with kids that were more likely to TPR. 3 months after SNAP completed we were placed with newborn, he is now 10 months and we should TPR on Aug 5th and he should be adopted around first of year. 16-18 month process still even though bparents never showed at court, never visited, nothing. This was our situation. So glad we did SNAP bc we wouldn't have been placed with him as regular FC placement since they thought TPR was probable.

Yes, I have to agree(imagine that in BOLD print), unless you are doing SNAP, you need to view it as a Foster. When they are looking for a placement, an hour before they leave for the day(or in my experience, any other time) they are not looking for someone who only wants kids going towards adoption, they are calling foster parents on the list with an open placement that fits(somewhat close) to the child they are trying to place. They aren't really reviewing your preference. That is after being a fosterparent in Indy for 6 years . . . .

Thanks for the tips, everyone. We are concurrently trying to get licensed for both SNAP and foster-to-adopt. We'd prefer to do SNAP, but we know because we are looking for < 5 that it is much more likely that we will find a child in that age range through foster-to-adopt. We want a younger child because our bio son is 5 and we have birth order concerns. We know that there is a risk with foster-to-adopt that we would not keep the child and that's a risk we're willing to take. I am just afraid that we will have several children in and out of our home and our son will bond with them and therefore be heartbroken when they leave.

Our son was 5 when we 1st started the process - kids are pretty resilient (and smart) if you are HONEST and UPFRONT with them. Set expectations. There is a child who doesn't have a place to stay right now and we are going to let him stay with us. Isn't that great? Do NOT tell your child he is getting a forever sibling - not until the day you have adoption papers in hand and it's official. You just NEVER know in these situations (TPR filed or not).