SW MO timeline

Maybe near the end of the classes, they will ask for your e-mail. That's what they did at our class and how we got on the list. The last class will be a panel session (unless they have changed things up), so if it hasn't been brought by then, that might be a great opportunity to bring it up. Yes, not wanting infants may help a lot. We did not take infants either at first as we didn't figure we'd have a snowball's chance of getting one, plus our son was older, and we we thought we were "done" with the baby stage. We really wanted older kids. Actually like over 8, or even 10 or so. And we were on a "break" when we got called for our daughter. We had asked our LW to take our name off the list for a while as we had had a placement recently leave us. But I got called by a parent aid who was begging us to take her as they could not find a home for her. We are in a VERY busy county, but I thought it odd they couldn't find a home for a healthy 6 week old baby girl. And she was only supposed to be short term. (At least in the foster care world anyway.) Funny thing, when I asked DH about taking her, he was really hesitant and not wanting to do the "baby" thing as we had NOTHING for infants except a pack-n-play. He said it was up to me. I said yes, picked her up after work and brought her home. As soon as DH held her, he was done for! We went shopping that night and he was like a kid at Christmas buying stuff for her. Granted at this time, the placement was only supposed to be temporary. Adoption was not even an option at that point. But as it turned out, she is staying here forever. :)

What is the DVN number? Thanks!

Your DVN is your vendor number with the state. We were told to go the local state office to get a card made that included our pictures as well as our DVN. (But I don't know that this is done in every county.) You will need to know this number though as they will tie all your continuing training and payments to this number. Your LW should have this number if you do not know it.

Elk, I suspect we may end up in a similiar situation to you. My hubby and I have been adamant that we prefer the 8-10 year range, and that we are done with babies. I don't know. I've pestered our CW just a little as originally we wanted to adopt a girl from the website. It turns out that she's not one we can take due to her issues, so I was kind of bummed. She assured me that she's looking and will find us kids. I dont want to be one of those that get licensed but no placements for years. She's assuring me that won't be the case. She actually said she was looking at a 2 and 4 yr old a county over, and I told her we'd take and love them, but they're kinda younger than we expected. We could do it, but we really thought they'd want families for older children.

hopefulBunch, How long has it been since you signed your contract? Are you through all your classes? How is it going for your family any placements?

I haven't signed a contract yet as we aren't finished with classes. We have 4 classes left, our physicals to get done, and the last homestudy where they will interview our son. Everything else is fininshed. Our background checks, home safety checks, and the majority of our homestudy is complete. :happydance: We have been approved to do Respite, but I'm not hearing anything more about it. I don't know if it will actually happen before we finish classes or not. Our current classes are the STARS classes. We will still need to go through SPAULDING classes in order to adopt.

We have 3 classes to complete prior to foster licensing. They need to interview our bio-son to complete our homestudy. Hubby and I have our physicals done. Our sons physical is scheduled for next week. My mom had her background check done so she can have grandma duties with any of our children. She would like to be able to keep them before/after school if needed, take them on outings, etc and so on. Today we turned in our application to do Respite care. Our caseworker stated that our respite license should be back in 5-10 days. :cheer: We found out that First Aid and CPR classes will be offered in October or November. They aren't required for licensing, but are required within the first year of licensing. We don't know when Spaulding classes will begin. We think and hope they will happen this fall as well.

Elk, is that true for Respite licensing too? We have a vendor number and signed our contract. We are waiting for a respite license from Jefferson City now.

You know, I am not really sure on just a respite license, but I would imagine. We never actually received a respite only license. We just had our regular foster license. But you will be "in the computer" once your contract is signed and can start getting calls. Funny thing about respite is we didn't get *that* many calls for it. But we did do some. I think that they (well our county anyway) just doesn't have that great of a mechanism to track who is available for respite. Sometimes when we needed respite, we were on our own to find it. It was sometimes hard to find respite homes. Many of them are foster homes with placements and don't really want the added child(ren) for respite. But one home we used for respite for one of our kiddos had told us they had been interested in respite for some time, but never got calls. We sure could have used them if we had known that! I just don't know what's going on with the whole respite situation though. I had suggested to our LW one time that it would be great if there was a private forum or website that foster parents and respite families could have access to arrange respite. But, of course, that would have to go through Jeff City, and would probably never happen. But how efficient that would be!

I have a strong impression our cw is going to need to arrange respite care situations. I don't know. I'm still trying to figure out how everything works. It will be disappointing if we never get any calls. I really do not know how our phone numbers and such get out there to other foster parents. That's a question for us too. I guess we'll find out as we muddle through.

We have one more class next Monday night where we meet the local panel or team. We have one last homestudy visit September 30th.From there we see.I understand the panel/team will meet on Oct. 25th to approve or disapprove homestudies. If approved it will be sent to the state for licensing. I dont know how long it will take from there. Our Respite license should be coming back any day now.

My understanding is that CPR and First Aid should be offered sometime this fall. We can be licensed without it as long as we do those within a year of our licensing. SPAULDING (adoption) classes probably won't be held again until spring.

I don't know how the respite licensing will go, or if we will even get a respite placement. We are going to start attending the once monthly Foster parent support meeting so we can potentially meet other foster parents in our area, and maybe learn more and network in that way. The next one is the first Thursday in October, and it's presumed that we can attend. We were told that the placement workers get a fresh and updated print out each day of each licensed families current placements and availabilities. What we REALLY want is only one or two, and we'd like to adopt. Our CW mentioned there is a 7 year old boy locally who would soon be looking for an adoptive family. While we really want a girl we are considering asking to meet him and possibly be placed with him. Our 11 yr old son badly wants a sibling, and he doesn't care about gender. A 7 yr old boy could be a good fit for him, and that's what's important, right? Maybe we could go ahead and focus on him, and wait for our right little girl to come along. After all we've learned in class we are beginning to think if we really want a daughter we might want to wait for a younger one rather than trying to adopt one who is already close to our son's age.

Just wanted to update. We finished all of our classes. We met at the local library, reviewed our homestudy for mistakes, and it was submitted. The local CD panel meets October 25th at their monthly meeting to review our homestudy. They can accept or decline it, but we've been told it's more a formality and there aren't any red flags. We are told the local CD then inputs our information into MULES and FACES, and then we are licensed foster parents!:cheer: It could take up to 3 weeks, but may also go faster given that we are licensed respite. After all of that is done a CD worker will set up to come to our home and go over the foster parenting contracts with us. Once that is done we are good to go. I hope we have better luck fostering than we've had with respite. We have had only the one respite situation. The same family has asked a couple of times if we could do respite again, but for both dates I have had to work. So, well, it hasn't worked out. We'll see what happens in the next few weeks I guess! We still want to adopt, but with only a foster license we cannot submit our home study for any staffing considerations. We had to have the SPAULDING classes first, and an adoption study. I don't know what an adoption study entails. The other option is to foster, and as foster of any adoptive kiddos we could be submitted for staffings of those children. If that were to happen we would only need to complete the SPAULDING classes prior to adopting. We CAN take SPAULDING classes in another county if we'd like. We only need to let our local CD know so that they can make contact re: the payment for our attendance.

Married 6/9/1989 DS bio 23 DD bio 21 DD bio 20 The Journey in Jasper County. 1st placements 6/28/2011(ru goal to 6/2012, Adoption 5/2013, final 7/2013) Boy age 3, Boy age 7 Kinship license 7/26/2011 Stars 4/2012-5/2012 License 5/30/2012 Second placements 6/8/12 Boy age 3, Girl age 2 (Ru 12/21/2012) Third placement 8/2/2012 Boy age 1 month (ru goal to 02/2013, Adoption 12/2013, final 01/23/14) Fourth placement 1/07/2013 Boy age 5 month (ru goal) Fifth placement 02/2013 Boy age 8 (moved to kinship 5/2013) Sixth placement 05/30/2013 (bio to placement 4) Girl age 15 (ru goal to 12/2013, Apla goal)