Emergency Shelter Home

Of course as you said the timeline is going to vary. My first emergency placement is soon going to be my adopted daughter, so I'm not much help with the BTDT, other than what you've already experienced. But, from my understanding from others who do this, is that you keep the emergency placement for a short time until family can be found or until a long-term or adoptive home can be selected. This might only be a couple of day or it take a few months sometimes, depending upon the cases. If you only take infants, they are easy to place, you shouldn't have them too long, but it would be a comfort to know they are being well cared for until the right family can be found. I know a few families that will not take a baby right from the hospital because they cannot go to daycare. So having a home for them for the first 6-8 weeks even , would provide the time needed until the little one could move to the selected family. I know at least one family that doesn't want one under six months old. I think it is great you want to do this.

I really wanted emergency placements because it seemed far less difficult to prepare for the kids to leave. Plus in our area, a lot of the kids who end up being adoptable come at odd hours and during the weekend so the families willing to take emergency placements have an easier time adopting. We accepted an emergency placement at the end of August of four siblings and it sounded like a situation where a family needed short-term help and relatives would be found quickly. We thought the sib set would be here for less than a week. Almost 2 months later, 3 are still here. After they were taken into care it was determined the situation was far more messed up then initially thought and their parents were liars. All areas are different and I'm not sure if some counties have designated emergency only homes. But I do think it's a good idea if older kids went through a home trained to help kids make the transition into foster care. As a new foster parent, I wasn't prepared for that. While our sib set have less behavior problems than the average foster kid, it still was very difficult to deal with them and having your own bio kids could make it even worse. The older two had a lot of questions we couldn't answer, wanted to go help their parents, had a cell phone and was calling everyone they knew and telling them where they were. It was the worse crisis they had ever been in and all their anger was aimed at us like we were holding them hostage against their wills and were the only adults they could vent their anger about what had happened. They still don't believe their parents did anything wrong or there was any reason for them to be in care. While I didn't expect them to be happy and knew there would be some anger, I didn't think it would be directed at us. I expected more sadness, and hopefully relief at being out of a bad situation. They were initially told that this might be a big mistake and everything would be cleared up in less than 24 hours so every day they got more and more frustrated and angry that they still have to be living with us. Once it had been determined the kids weren't going to be immediately returned to their parents or another relative, we were given the option of moving them to another foster home if we didn't think we could handle them. But there was definite pressure to keep them so they wouldn't need to be moved again. I would recommend checking with how emergency placements are handled in your county and how long they typically last if you want to avoid getting locked into having a child for a longer period of time.

From what I understand, Emergency Placements just mean you are willing to take a child at any time of the day... you're available 24/7. Otherwise, they only call from 9am-5pm. So, the time can vary, just like any "normal" placement.