process of placement

Here we get a call and if we say yes we get the child. It's this way for foster and adoption. Either way they aren't really scouting out multiple homes at one time unless you are really slow to reply. They usually give you at least an hour to make a decision or 24-48 hours for pre-adopt.

What state are you in? I'm with an agency and they call us with minimal information. We say yes or no and they contact Dcfs to let them know they've identified a placement. Usually we get the placement but there have been times we've lost placements because we've waited too long to reply.

Yes, ditto the other posters. Here, they call you, and you say yes or no. The only reason you wouldn't get the placement after that is if they find relatives all of a sudden that the child can stay with. If you miss the call, they totally move on to other families. Is this for foster care or adoptive placements? Sounds like there are an abundance of homes available in your area.

When I did foster care years ago, we were licensed through the county. When we said yes, we got placement. This time around, we are going through an FFA (foster family agency). With the FFA, the county has exhausted all of their families, with no results. So they send out the child's profile to all the FFA's they contract through. The FFA then turns around and contacts their families they think may be interested. When a family says yes, the family's profile is submitted to the county. This could mean 10 families say yes to a baby. The county then picks a family and goes with it. Both of our placements were after hours. One at 6 am and the other at 7pm.

I'm in Los Angeles. We got about 4 calls for potential placements... were given very basic info like drug/alcohol info, gender age, general situation, health. If we said we were interested, they'd say they would call us back. The first three times they never called me back. Things come up like birth family stepping up or social workers finding another match, or someone else may have just responded faster. On my fourth call, they called me back within 5 minutes and said I had 30 minutes to get to the hospital. Within 3 hours of getting the call, I was already home with a newborn and was in disbelief. Oh and number 4 is now our amazing daughter :) GL!