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For those of you that have done foster care/ foster to adopt. We are in the process and its looking like we may have the kids in our home in the beginning of the year, but I am wondering in case its a little later and finalization hasn't happened are we able to take them out of state on vacation? We are planning a trip to the Wisconsin Dells... we live in MN. I plan on asking our social worker when we see her next week but just thought I would see if any of you know. Thanks for your replies :)
Hey we actually just took a trip to the dells. In class they encouraged us to take our foster children with us which we had planned on doing anyways. Both of our cw have been great with it. In Illinois all we have to do is get an out of state consent. We have to let them know our vehicle info and the dates and the address of where we will be staying. We have had to do this 3 times and have never had any issues!! By the way the dells is an awesome vacation spot!!
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I've taken foster kids on vacations. On our trip to Chicago, I gave the cw phone numbers. I've also taken them on cruises. For the first 2, we had to get parental permission. The 2 youngest, I just let the cw know as they were from a disruption.
In my state, at least in my region, as long as we give the CW as much advance notice as we can and fill out the vacation request form, she can have enough time to take it to the judge for approval. My CW told me that as long as she has been doing this (13 yrs), they only time she has ever heard of a judge denying vacation is b/c a court date fell right smack in the middle of when they would've been gone. All the family did was move around their days they were going to be gone and the judge granted permission. :)
We took our FS out of our state in June for two weeks. We traveled by car to see family in two different states, furthest stop being a 26 hour drive from our front door (trip was broken up w/ stops in between of course). Like Froggie38 :0) said, we just had to submit a form with a summary of our travel plans, it was actually emailed to the judge and the judge sent an email back that just said "approved". I expected something more official! I just printed the email chain and stuck it in the folder for the road.
Have fun!
Awesome thanks for your experiences! Kind of a relief to know it is possible. Mommy33 I know my husband and I just went this last summer just the 2 of us. I hadn't been there since I was 12... boy has it changed in 18 years! That's why we want to take them there. We seen all the kids having fun and families. We wanted some of that fun! Glad to know it shouldn't be a problem!
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In my state we have to get judges approval for out of state trips, but it is just a formality as long as we are sure to reschedule missed visits and the child will not miss important things like school.
We took our foster kids to the Dells a few times. One thing I learned though is that it can be overwhelming. The waterparks can be loud and busy and for kids with sensory problems this can create unsafe behaviors. We took our foster kids to Disney 6 weeks after placement with us (the trip had been planned) and it was one of our bigger parenting mistakes. Just keep it in the back of your mind when you take them. Have fun!
In CA we had to have birthmom's permission to take our FD out of state and when she refused it had to go to a judge. Our social worker told us it was unlikely for a judge to clear it so we should just plan on not going to having respite care. This did not sound right to me so I called a supervisor and they said it would be no problem to get a judge to ok it, she was right : ) I think out SW just didn't want to hassle with it, at least not until her supervisor put the pressure on her.