Advertisements
Hi everyone I am new to this site and I have lots of questions. My hubby and I have started the process of getting certified to foster adopt. We would like to be a strickly adoptive family because we do not have any bio kids and we don't think we could take having a child placed with us and then taken away. We are open to having a sibling group of 2 kids and we would like to have ages between 1 and 6. We will hopefully be starting our STARS classes next week!!! Does anyone know the length of the classes when you take them on Saturdays and how long it would take to get placements after that in the age range we are looking for. I know that it could take longer than we would like because we are wanting youunger kids but I would like some imput from all of you that probablly have way more information than I do. I have not had the best comunication with my social worker that is why I am reaching out to all of you. We were origionally hoping to have placements by christmas but it has taken us so long to find out when the STARS classes were that it might be impossible. Any suggestions or advise would be greatly appreciated!!:clap:
Like
Share
I can only share the experience we are having and hope that helps you. We just started STARS classes and have been to 3. Next week will be class #4. Our classes are on a week night from 6-9 p.m., and they last 9 weeks. We should finish by the end of September.
I understand we will need to attend Spaulding classes after the STARS classes in order to adopt. I've heard they would consist of 2 classes, but I don't know if that's correct.
Advertisements
Where we are at, we started classes in late Feb, and werent fully licensed until last friday. The length of time until placement really depends on where you are and whether or not there are alot of kids coming into care. We have had about six calls since last friday, none have worked out even though we said yes to three of them. I would be prepared for them to ask you to take placements that are well out of your range, I have found that out already!
If you are going to do adoption, you will need to take the Spaulding class in addition to the STARS (for fostering). We took our STARS over 9 weeks, and Spaulding took 1 Saturday (it was set for 9 hours, but we finished up after about 7 hours) - we had about a month in between the end of STARS and the Spaulding class. If I recall correctly, we had our fostering license about the time we started Spaulding (but, it was June, so they were trying to get everything pushed through before the end of MO's fiscal year for budgeting purposes).
I know that the fact we'd gone through Spaulding (but hadn't yet gotten the update done to our license) was one of the key factors in them placing the newborn we got with us (especially with the really young, they want to prevent them moving a lot so they look for families with both foster/adopt).
All that being said, it all comes down to your licensing worker and the licensing office timeline - difficult to predict.