How did you find your foster/adopt child?

This all depends on the area. I'm in a high child abuse/neglect california county due to a methamphetamine epidemic. They license foster parents here as quick as they can recruit them, and almost everyone I know who is interested in adopting has within a few placements. Can you talk to some current foster parents in the area to find out how busy they are and the reunification rate?

I was not interesting in fostering, only adopting, so I looked at only legally free children. I found my daughter on a neighboring state photolisting site. She was 6 years old at the time of placement.

The RU rate is about 35% I think. I'm not positive, but I do know we have become the #1 meth area too. We are rural, so I don't know what that implies in regards to how many come into care. One of the guys co-teaching our class said he refused the first placement offer. His second was a sibling group that they adopted. They've had some other kids come and go. They now have another sibling group moving toward adoption, but I think it was awhile between the two. What can we expect in regard to typical ages for calls?

I can only tell you the way it works in our area. When a foster child is going to adoption, their foster parents are asked FIRST, before anyone else, if they would like to adopt. If they say yes, they adopt. If they say no, then the search for an adoptive family begins, and that is where you would come into the picture. Your homestudy would be submitted along with countless other homestudies for each child you were interested in. Caseworkers would go over the homestudies and pick the top 2 or 3 families to meet with, and then make their selection from that. In my area, you are better off fostering with the hopes of adopting than trying to get a legally free / almost legally free child placed with you as an adoptive placement. Many, many infants/toddlers do NOT go home in my area, and most foster parents choose to adopt their infant/toddler foster children when they become available for adoption. Families waiting for legally free infants/toddlers wait a very, very, very long time. What age group are you requesting?

Some areas have foster to adopt programs where infants with poor prognoisis for going home go to resourse homes. (those willing to adopt) We are rural too, so no formal program like that. We only have what the PP said. People who want infants and toddlers that are nearly legally free wait a long time because most foster homes end up adopting their infant and toddler kids and they have first choice. I know many families who adopt their foster children, because sadly, meth is the devil and is very hard to beat. My agency was really good at finding homes for the children. With me, my adoption was actually children I knew and loved that came into care. But, I would have been able to adopt my second placement had I not ended up with four other children I was already committed to. His RU failed. :( There will be foster parents in your agency who wish to adopt and those that do not. In our area, they do not place small children in homes where the foster parents are not open to adoption. This does not mean they are committed to adopting every child, it just serves as a way to try to minimize moves. It sounds like there is a great need in your area for both foster and adoptive homes. If you are willing to go through the roller coaster that is foster care, I'm certain you will be able to adopt. It will not take 10 years.

OH, I forgot to answer about the calls. I was licensed for 0-18, I requested 0-4 and long term placements. I was ok with high risk. I got dozens of calls. I had to turn most of them down. I only wanted to foster one family at a time. I got a lot of calls for teens, and quite a few for kids 4-8 and when I was about to do IVF and I already had one todder placement I got a call for a baby. That baby went to a friend of mine and is being adopted. Then I got my kinship placement of a toddler and baby. I still got calls! It is seriously a problem here. They are having to ship children out of county.

I don't know what the reality is. According to my county stats I am not seeing any adoptions whatsoever in my county (out of foster care) for at least the past 2 years. I don't know if that's because they don't have families willing to adopt, or if they don't have children. I know that they went to the senior center trying to recruit respite providers, but I'm not sure if that's normal, or if the region we're in is in that tough of a bind. We are homestudied for ages 4-10, but will accept 0-10. We don't think we want a baby or toddler necessarily, but wouldn't say no. I just thought with both of us working full time sticking to school-aged might be best.

I am still trying to figure out how all of this works. The calls that come, are they primarily emergency calls, or do social workers moving children from home to home call? How does all of this work? I mean, if you take a child are they normally JUST coming into care, or have they been put somewhere temporarily and they're looking for a longer placement????

Holy cow. I would be concerned about the lack of adoptions in your area! Are you an area where foster parents are not allowed to adopt? Perhaps there is a separate entity who does adoptions. We do not have an adoptive unit in our county. State adoptions does it and the adoptive homestudies are done by a private agency. Anyway, I was not foster-to-adopt necessarily. I was a straight foster parent who asked to be placed with children who they thought might be long term placements. I was open to adoption, but was ok with supporting reunification efforts with the parents. My main goal was helping children. Almost all the calls I got were for kids just coming into care. The CW thought with the nature of the problems, it would be a long case. There was twice I was called for kids who were already in care. Once, for a teen who wanted to move back to our hometown. Like I said, our county has been forced to ship kids out of county. The other was after I had my twins. The person who approached me did not realize that the mother of my kids had signed an identified surrender. That was a baby who needed to find a new home because the foster parent realized she could not commit to adopt & the parents were not doing well. My county tries to not move kids much. Some counties do, but it's not healthy for the kids to make a bunch of moves. The problem with all this is that states and even counties vary wildly with how things work. I think your best bet is to find out answers locally.

This is the 2011 report for my county: Child Protection and Permanency Children involved in hotline reports: 211 Children with substantiated abuse or neglect: 16 Children with family assessments: 140 Average monthly children in foster care: 22 Children adopted 0

I do know that is ONLY my county, and we are part of a larger region group. So, I could easily get calls from other neighboring counties. I'm wondering how big the need for foster care is when we had only 22 children were in care last year. Heck, I know where 3 of them are. The co-teacher of our class has those.

I don't know the adoption statistics for my county, but we have about 100 kids coming into care each year. We are a county of less than 45,000 people. :eek:

Don't get discouraged. We are finished with our homestudy and in the waiting period. The best advice I can give is to turn down cases that sound like they are too open. If they are still ordering visitation twice a week that might not be a case for you. If the child's case is suspected to have TPR soon then that might be a good risk for you. Unfortunately there just aren't any guarantees when there are so many people involved. Just don't give up and play it by ear.

Hopeful, My husband and I went to orientation last week and our first class is tomorrow and we felt like they were really pressuring us to foster care. We want permanancy as well, we really just want to adopt. We are a younger couple and I don't think emotionally we could handle having children go in and out of our home. I need more stability than that. We are interested in 2 siblings in a different county and I found them through HeartGallery.com under Florida and they had different counties listed, so I looked up each one and went through the photolistings. My husband and I instantly felt connected to these two children, so we had to get the ball rolling by attending the classes and getting our home study done. I am trying to stay positive because I know we still have a ways to go before we can contact their CW. Please let me know how everything works out for you. Best wishes.