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How and when did you get your first placement? What was it like, how did it go? Was your placement short-term, permanent, adoptable, etc? Please share.
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Mommyforever
I see it as if it was yesterday!We had been waiting for them since February, the wait was horrible because we knew the conditions they were living and it broke our hearts! Our program works with minor refugees only, they are not adoptable only able to foster them as they may have parents from their country still alive. These are children displaced due to war, famine etc..May 8th 2001, at the airport to get our two 14 year old boys from Sudan:love: So very tall, so very skin & bones. Tall is an understatement, skin color an ebony that just glowed! Never been in a car, never drank cold anything and never watched a movie. They walked onto the airplane from the camp. The only doors they had seen were at the airport- open when they walked up to them!:confused: doors were so foreign/let alone door handles. Their clothes were thread bare, you could see through them. After 36 hours of travel they were so exhausted but they didn't stop until after a 2 hour trip from the airport, long shower and some food to start them off with. Then a nap of 18 hours straight:eek: The next 5 years were amazing, getting them through high school, into college and safely independent:woohoo:The next 6 years; they have completed their degrees:banana: , busy working and living. They come home for Holidays and call (not often enough but they call). They are a wonderful example to our current boys and treat all the boys as brothers!!The stories they told us were amazing, we learned so much from them. We have a very special relationship with our boys and they have completed our life. I can't believe the blessings we have had with them and our boys after them. Just an amazing time.
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I was placed with Nugget 3 months after getting certified. He has been with us for 18 months and I have started many a thread concerning him. His case is complicated and looks like it could be one of those that gets counted in years instead of months. This is not what I intended when I started my foster2adopt journey, but it is what I signed up for. I think even a straight foster parent would be frustrated by now. Serenity prayer, serenity prayer, serenity prayer.
TXHopeful1
I got the call three days after being licensed for a 1yo girl- she was dropped off that night, and has been with me ever since. I became her legal mommy 17 months after she was placed with me :cheer: Took a break from fostering for a while and my license is coming up to be renewed. Rejoined the forums recently to see what I've been missing and make a decision as to whether I want to renew or let it expire......jury's still out on that one. :o
Our first placement was short. We were called about a week after being licensed for a 3 month old boy. The CW said he had a broken ankle and his full body scan showed various healed broken bones. After a 3 hour wait, I met the CW and the BPs at the hospital. Mother was sobbing hysterically. I gave her my phone number so she could text me if she wanted to check on him. (The CW asked me in front of the her if she could have my number so I felt like I had to do it.) The mother texted and called during the weekend. On Monday at the hearing, the baby was moved to his grandmothers. He was diagnosed with osteogenisis imperfecta and reunited with his parents.
The day after we were licensed, we got a call about a newborn baby girl. She had tested positive for drugs at birth. We picked her up from the hospital. She was with us for a few weeks and went to live with a family member. We were a little sad but it was easier to say goodbye then I thought it would be.Our second placement was a toddler brother and sister. I got a call and they arrived an hour later. They were filthy when they showed up and only came with a few clothes that didn't fit well. They had been in care for several months in a family placement. Both of them were really sick, we would learn that they had RSV. That night the little boy's eardrum ruptured. It was the night before my son's first day of kindergarten. Such an emotional roller coaster. We bonded to them fairly quickly. A few weeks after they moved in, a major hurricane hit our city and we were forced to evacuate. It took a few days before we could even get back into our house. And then it was another few weeks before we had power (luckily we had a generator to run our fridge, power one tv and a few lights). I think all the craziness really encouraged bonding. We were devastated when they left to go to a fictive kin placement two months later.We kept fostering and after a few stressful years, we adopted our third and fourth placements :)
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Ten days after getting licensed we got a call for newborn twin baby girls who were still in NICU. We were so excited and shocked that the first call would be for twins!!! Bio mom was a young teen from a bad family and Dad was not too interested in them. Many foster families passed them up since it was right around the holidays and they were twins. The girls have been here ever since and we are in the process of adopting them (we said we'd NEVER adopt & my my how things change) thanks to their young parent who were wise enough to know that you can't juggle twins and a drug lifestyle and signed away their rights! Now they are healthy and spoiled rotten. Once we add on to the house we'll keep fostering medically fragile newborns.
GirlFriday
Ten days after getting licensed we got a call for newborn twin baby girls who were still in NICU. We were so excited and shocked that the first call would be for twins!!! Bio mom was a young teen from a bad family and Dad was not too interested in them. Many foster families passed them up since it was right around the holidays and they were twins. The girls have been here ever since and we are in the process of adopting them (we said we'd NEVER adopt & my my how things change) thanks to their young parent who were wise enough to know that you can't juggle twins and a drug lifestyle and signed away their rights! Now they are healthy and spoiled rotten. Once we add on to the house we'll keep fostering medically fragile newborns.
Our princess was placed with us 5 dys after our temp license arrived in the mail...she wa 3 months old, neglected, weighing in at 8 lbs 4 o. A week later we had her up to 10 lbs 7 oz! Boogie is now 17 months old, and TPR is set for 11 days from today! We will hopefully be her adoptive resource!!!!!!!
Our first placement was a newborn girl I picked up straight from the hospital at 24 hours old. Every red light gave me a chance to look in the backseat and make sure she was really still there. I couldn't believe they gave ME a baby! A month later we got her older sibling, who we had been matched with previously and were transitioning to our home.They are both still here over 2 years later, both in the waiting game of TPR limbo.
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He was a developmentally delayed 11 month old with a severe heart condition. He was in the system because his mom left him at the WIC office. She literally just forgot about him (she was also delayed). He stayed with us three weeks. There were 2 visitations weekly and 2 court dates during that 3 week period. Plus, he got very sick and was hospitalized for a night. He was "reunified" with his maternal grandma. A few months later we learned he was back in the system. We were never notified, although we had expressed willingness to adopt if he became available for adoption. At this time I do not know what ever happened to him. I hope he is OK.
When they first called me about an almost 5 yr old girl and her 6 yr old brother, I told them that I can't because I am not licensened yet (everything was done, just waiting for that paper) and they said, "Oh yes you do have a license, we put it in the mail today." They kids came a couple of hours later and stayed for about 5 months before going back to family. My biggest mistake with them, was that I felt sorry for them so I made sure to plan something really special every weekend so they would have lots of fun then one weekend we were just to busy to go anywhere and they acted up big time saying that they were owed an outing every weekend. After that, I learned to also set the basic ground rules right away.
I actually got called for a singlet 4yo girl less than a month after licensing, but I hadn't had my first meeting with my Foster Worker at that point (I had been working 60 hour weeks but was transitioning to a different position.) So, I said no, but, realized later, I could have feigned ignorance and had her, LOL. SO, I got my first placement at 6 weeks or so mark, give or take. 2 little girls, 2.5 and 5. They quickly won my heart and I was their mom for 2 years. Bio mom literally did NOTHING in her case plan except fairly consistent supervised visits. She fell into free rent for a year, cant say more on that, so obtained "proper housing" and that was good enough for CPS. Truth is that they failed to build their case properly due to a bad CW. WHen that CW quit 2 months before RU, the new CW and her supervisor were flabbergasted that this case had gone on for so long. Whilst we were in the midst of it, I kept being told "oh, this is normal" by the workers, but everyone else, the transporters, etc, said that they should have already been TPRd. So, long story short, they were sent back to their bio mom literally 2 years to the day they came to my home, this even though their step dad punched Monkey the week before. They made me a mom and will be forever my daughters. I know that they will come and find me when they are old enough.
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Maybe they try to ease new foster parents into things? My first was a six year old, second was a three day old and third was a ten year old. Of those, I adopted the ten year old. After those first three, my placements all came in sibling groups of 2-3. Six years later, I look at that first placement as being a god-send as it broke me into parenting. Afterwards, nearly all of the kids seemed soooo easy :prop: