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Hello, I am not sure where to post this so I'm posting it here. Please feel free to redirect me if needed. I am a 25 year old married female. I am the oldest of 10 kids and have 5 younger siblings who were put into foster care in Nevada after my father was arrested for abuse. My mother failed to comply with the court so I guess her parental rights must have been terminated. I was 21 at the time, but living in a different state (Virginia). No one contacted me to let me know that that the children were put into foster care or to ask if I would like custody. I found out that they were put into foster care when I got a phone call from my sister. I am have now been married for 2 years and we are in a stable living situation. I wanted to look into adopting my siblings but found out that the foster family had already adopted 4 of my siblings but the oldest who was 13, didn't want to be adopted and was placed in the care of her school teacher who became a foster parent after hearing her story. I don't understand why the courts never contacted me to ask if I wanted custody. Aren't the courts supposed to try to place children with family members FIRST before placing them with a foster parent and aren't foster parents required to notify family members before children can be legally adopted? My real questions are what are my best options now to get custody of my 13 year old sister who is now in foster care and is there any way of contesting the adoption of my 4 other siblings?
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The agency might have tried to find you but couldn't. They might not have even known about you. Hard to say. You should be able to contact the agency about your sister still in care. Your other siblings you might be able to try to find the adoptive family and see if they would allow contact with you.
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You might look into getting licensed to adopt in the state you are in. Meanwhile try to contact your sister's social worker and let her know of your interest. Contesting the adoption of the other children would likely be difficult and expensive. I would also try contacting their new parents, respectfully and seeing if you can have some contact. I was in your position and the difficulty the social workers had with giving me my siblings was I was not making enough money to support them all. I did end up getting custody of three of them but not all at once. The first time there was an issue, I did not have room or income sufficient to take the five I would have needed to, I was able to take one, and then later another and then after I was married the third one. I still regret not being able to take them.
Social workers mostly go on lists of possible relatives/ contact information from the parents (possibly, but I don't think often, from the kids). If no one told them about you, they probably wouldn't have known how to contact you, even if they knew you existed. If the adoption has been finalized, it is unlikely you would have grounds to contest it. The best bet you would have is, as others have said, contacting their adoptive parents. You might want to write a letter, telling them about yourself, that you only recently learned that your siblings had been adopted, and that you would like to be able to be a part of their lives. You asked if foster parents are supposed to contact family before adoption, and the answer is no. CPS is supposed to make their best effort to do so, but foster parents wouldn't be likely to have any way to do so and have no standing to make those decisions. I tell you this because I don't want you to go into trying to contact them (if you choose to do so) with the idea that it was them who left you out of the loop or that they did something wrong.I'm sorry you're going through this; I can't imagine how hard it must be. You can also talk to your 13-year-old sister's social worker about getting custody of her; you might also contact social services to mediate contact with the other kids' adoptive parents.
Social workers mostly go on lists of possible relatives/ contact information from the parents (possibly, but I don't think often, from the kids). If no one told them about you, they probably wouldn't have known how to contact you, even if they knew you existed. If the adoption has been finalized, it is unlikely you would have grounds to contest it. The best bet you would have is, as others have said, contacting their adoptive parents. You might want to write a letter, telling them about yourself, that you only recently learned that your siblings had been adopted, and that you would like to be able to be a part of their lives. You asked if foster parents are supposed to contact family before adoption, and the answer is no. CPS is supposed to make their best effort to do so, but foster parents wouldn't be likely to have any way to do so and have no standing to make those decisions. I tell you this because I don't want you to go into trying to contact them (if you choose to do so) with the idea that it was them who left you out of the loop or that they did something wrong. I'm sorry you're going through this; I can't imagine how hard it must be. You can also talk to your 13-year-old sister's social worker about getting custody of her; you might also contact social services to mediate contact with the other kids' adoptive parents.