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This is my very first post. I will try to explain the situation briefly and if someone can guide me I would be eternally grateful. I will try to remember some of the acronyms...
My H and I have been asked to adopt his Niece's child (19 mos). However, the situation is complicated: birthmom/ niece has had mental issues, learning disabilities, drug problems, anger, sexually abused/promiscuous, jail-time, and tried to commit suicide. She has tried to get herself straight (rehab and anger management completed so-far). The child was taken by CPS when she tried to commit suicide and has been in FC since. Court has determined she cannot have the child living where she does (with her mother and Grandmother). All have/had mental illness issues and drug problems. GreatGrandmother is also unable to help due to severe health issues.
Update to now: We were asked to visit child this past weekend. Niece has until Jan.4 to make a decision. Because the child has been in FC/system for 15 + mos. the choices are: A) birthmom/niece gets employed and an approved apartment and continues through her programs with monitoring with the system (this will probably not happen due to her problems within the time period and it's a small town where everyone including employers know her story and are unwilling to employ her due to her jail record). B) Relatives (US) are able to adopt her with birthmom/niece TPR (which I don't think birthmom would be willing to do unless forced) C) Put baby up for adoption for anyone including present FC parents.
We have no clue where to proceed from here. I'm pretty sure we need to get a lawyer pronto. We are also older 52-53 with 2 older daughters who still live with us and go to college. What should we expect? The goal is to try to keep the child in the family instead of going to strangers. We are in NC and the child is in MD.
We didn't see this coming and have never had to deal with something like this before. Any suggestions, tips, or support would be appreciated!!! Thanks.
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If you do proceed you definately need a lawyer thats experienced with adoption issues. You will probably need a homestudy of some sort done (what kind will depend on your state laws) and ICPC (thats permission to bring baby to your state).
If TPR is scheduled for January you will need to get things done fairly quickly. I would call the caseworker assigned to the case and let them know you are wanting to be an adoptive resource for this child immediately. In most places a family member is preferred in adoption cases.
One other thing, not to be mean but worth considering. If the child is 19 months old and has been with her foster family for 15 months, perhaps their adopting her wouldnt be horrible, especially if they were willing to maintain a relationship with your family? Just a thought...good luck to all of you in this.
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I'm not sure about North Carolina, but here in Fl my grandsons were placed in state custody after being taken from their parents and they were placed with me as the caretaker. After about a year or so I was asked if I wanted to adopt or take permanent custody. Adoption here has better benefits so we chose that. The state paid for the homestudy, background check and the attorney and court costs. Find out who the caseworker is and talk to him/her about adopting or taking permanent custody yourself and find out what benefits are available for the child.
By adopting my grandsons they were added to my social security, they were also given an adoption subsidy of $417 a month, medicaid until 18 and paid college tuition and fees to any state college as long as we remain in the state.
If the mother doesn't give up custody voluntarily and parental rights haven't been terminated, you will have to go through ICPC and typically get certified as a foster home in your state. This can be a *LONG* and super frustrating process (see the ICPC forum). We were approved after 6 months, but other state have taken as long as 12. IMO, a lawyer wouldn't have helped (the ones I called basically told us to call back when we wanted to process the adoption), the only thing that helped was keeping on the case workers in our state and the child's state to get off their butts. Including threatening to contact our caseworker's supervisor and e-mailing the state director if DFCS when our caseworker would no longer respond to our e-mails. Unfortunately, there is no magic bullet and even WITH these actions, it can drag on for a long time. I would tell you to contact the child's SW and tell them you are interested in a relative placement, tell them to request ICPC approval from your state, and get the ball rolling. Once the ICPC people contact you, you will have to get a metric ton of paperwork together (paystubs, drug tests, rabies certificates for our pets, we even had to submit floor plans of our house) so just be on top of that and get it together ASAP since it is the only piece you can control.The most frustrating piece of all of this is that if TPR occurs or the parent voluntarily surrenders, this would all be unnecessary and the child would be available to you virtually immediately (at least that's what they've told us--this has not happened in our case). So I think the *best* scenario is to try and convince your niece to give up custody to you (I totally understand this is unlikely).
If the child is in CPS custody why is biomom (niece) getting to make the decision? Our daughter's biomom didn't get a choice on TPR...it was either voluntary or they were going to take the rights away. And in the end she also did not get a choice as to where her daughter went between the previous FP's home or our home. The reasoning was they didn't want to coerce her into signing away her rights by telling her that our niece would come here and live with us (which is what biomom wanted). They left it up to CPS to decide in their meeting they had. Our ICPC took a total of 11 months only because of some issues with the current foster family trying to adopt her also. It was an emotional roller coaster. We ended up having to get a full FC license here in our state in order to have her move here (across country). We then adopted her about a year later. We never wanted guardianship nor custody, we wanted adoption because it gives her permanency and her bioparents can't come back and try and get her back later on. We also wanted a say in when or if she seems them or speaks to them. She has had zero contact with her biodad cause he's in prison for a 10 yr sentence and had sporatic contact with biomom until she started doing drugs and having inappropriate conversations (adult topics) with our daughter. She has had no contact the past few years. We had to hire an attorney locally here to help with the ICPC process and also contact anyone we could think of to help us including the Governors office in the sending state. It was a mess so I suggest you get on that right now. ICPC's are a pain and alot of SW's know very little about their process. Good luck!