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My Husband and I are working with DCF in MA for the placement of his younger brother and sister with us here in MN. This process has only just began however we have a good working relationship with their CW as DCF has been involved with the family for 4+ years. I am wondering if anyone has any idea how long the process will take, if their parents don't fight it (they have agreed not to)? Should we be doing anything at this point to help the process along?
The CW has been great keeping us informed and working to get the mandatory visits done with their parents, but I am nervous and wondering whether the kids will be here in time for school start in Sept?
Also whose rules for placement apply? My research seems to indicate MA only requires a home study for Kinship but MN requires full licensure..
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Please get that license ASAP.
Ask SW for contact info with the current foster family. I cannot stress enough that the ffamily needs to know you are serious and WILL be taking placement of these children. Go visit them!!!! Do not let the ffamily deny you contact with the children under any circumstances--if they have dreams of adopting they will play the "the kids are bonded to us" card and stress to the court that you have not had contact with them. Call tomorrow!
Added--your caseworker can give you timeline information better than anyone here online. In our case the sending state set the placement "rules". For instance, our state does not give fparents the educational rights, but we had that right from the sending state.
ICPC can take a long time. Call call call and be sure everyone is staying on top of your paperwork. Our ICPC took 11months. The ffamily had decided they were going to adopt and gave us a hard time. As a result, they have NO contact with our child.
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When we had our ICPC the sending state did the request and whatever they required was what we had to do. Here we had to become a licensed foster home before they would approve the placement. You need to find out what the sending state requires and get that completed ASAP. Some require full licensing and some don't.
And our case was similar to other posters. The sending state (ID) wouldn't release our daughter to be adopted in our state (FL). That resulted in her losing the education stipend they give foster kids in our state (college education) which completely sucked! We did get some of our fees back such as travel expenses and an adoption stipend because she was Title IV eligible.
Our ICPC took 11 months
I am not to worried about the fosters families not knowing we want them and they are coming to us, they are older kids and both kids have been informed they are coming to us, we have already spoken to them on the phone at their foster homes (they are split up) The SW we are dealing with has never done ICPC before so this is a new experience for him as well so our timeline "could be anywhere from 3-12 months, but we are shooting to have the kids there by school start"
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