My husband and I cannot have children biologically. That is a very difficult sentence to type, even though it’s getting easier. I purposefully write “biologically” instead of “children of our own” because we currently have four amazing blessings that ARE our own children! Spunky Miss A, 7, and dynamite Little Guy, now 5, and two sisters, Curly Sue, 5, and Brown-Eyed-Baby, almost 2, joined our family through the foster care system. The path was a long one, but our lives have been forever changed by this journey and our hearts and eyes have been opened to the plights of thousands of children who wait every day for a loving home, whether permanent or temporary.
When people ask us about the foster care system, there are many questions and sometimes confusion. Everyone has heard of it, but not a lot of people have experienced it – either as a foster child or a foster parent. My husband and I have been a licensed foster home since July of 2009 and we love taking every opportunity to talk about this unique yet unknown pathway to parenthood. I’d like to shed some light about the route taken by my family as we fostered-to-adopt.
There’s a foster care path… there’s an adoption path… and there’s a foster-to-adopt path. When we went to our first informational meeting, this was explained to us in this way: Most people know about fostering and adoption. Fostering is taking in a child in state custody while his/her/their parents work on set goals and objectives to enable their home to be safe again. Adoption is a legally binding agreement to permanently parent a child that was not born biologically to you. There also is a “middle road”, with kids who are in the foster system and whose parents will more than likely lose their parental rights and need to be adopted. Instead of placing them in a foster home, then uprooting them to move to an adoptive home, foster-to-adopt parents agree to take on a little risk in order to help provide as much stability and continuity for the children in this situation.
10. You receive a lot of training and preparation to be a licensed foster home. It took us about six or seven months to officially be ready to have a child placed with us. We are in the state of Texas, so other states may have varying paths. We had PRIDE training, which for us was eight weeks of Saturday classes on everything from behavior management to illnesses to psychotropic medication. As with any adoption, there are home inspections and interviews and the official home study. We have to keep up to date with classes several times a year, and have fire marshal and health department inspections (the big ones!) every other year as long as you are licensed. Once you adopt the child (what is called consummation), and if you are no longer looking for additional placements, you’re on your own! It may seem overwhelming and/or superfluous to consider, (who else is actually REQUIRED to keep a home that is constantly clean and safe, to make sure their fridge is at exactly 42 or 43 degrees, or to fill out a form every time you even give your child Tylenol), but I remind myself to have confidence in the fact that we are definitely prepared!
9. It’s not for everybody. Many, many people have just shaken their heads at my husband and I, sighing, “I could never do that.” I feel either like a phony sitting still and letting them think we’re some amazing saintly people for being foster parents (we’re not – just ask my husband how lovable I am in the mornings!) or a little defensive if I sense they are “judging” our choices. I feel sad that they assume they couldn’t serve in this way. Some have asked if our already-adopted kids will be hurt too much if we continue to take in others and they end up leaving our home. I would say that dealing with the foster care system is not for the faint of heart, but it’s not for “perfect parents” either. You just need a love and a willingness to roll with the punches!
8. There can be many reasons why a child is removed from his or her biological home.There can be issues of drug or alcohol abuse, physical or emotional abuse or neglect by the parent/s, or risky exposure to someone else who may put the child in danger in any of these ways. The home may not be a safe place health-wise, as in it’s literally too dirty for people to live there. Each child is different, and the state and caseworkers try to treat each case differently as well and give individual attention.
7. When a placement happens, it happens quickly! Fortunately, we didn’t have to sit too long for our first placement. We received an e-mail about Miss A two months after we were officially ready to receive a foster care placement. She was already in a foster home and needed to be transferred to a foster-adopt home, so we were able to take our time about the transition. We had a week and a half to prepare her room, find clothes and diapers (she was 19 months old), and effervesce over her picture. We were able to spend one hour playing with her at the CPS office a few days before she came to live with us. Little Guy’s story was different: I received a call from our caseworker around lunch time and he was dropped off at our house that afternoon! Just enough time for a Target run and quick cleaning of the house! With the two siblings we just adopted, we received custody of the older sister within three hours of receiving a phone call, but baby sister was in the NICU for several weeks until she came home to us.
6a. You won’t go in blind about your foster child. When you are given information about a potential placement, you learn age, gender, and basic information about the child and his or her situation. You are free to ask questions. Once you agree and placement happens, you receive a big binder with every piece of paperwork correlating to that child’s case and you learn a LOT! This definitely helps you keep perspective in remembering the tough situations some kids have gone through, and you will be prepared
6b. BUT You won’t know everything about your foster child (right away)– and sometimes that’s a good thing! With both of our little ones, once parental rights were terminated and the adoption process actually began, we received the complete, intact, whole, inclusive file on the kid to read before the adoption. The thought is to give you now every single confidential piece of information now that you are going to officially and legally be the permanent parent for this child. With both of our adoptions came some monumental surprises when we read the nitty gritty details. It absolutely had no impact on our decision to adopt them, or changed how much we love them; I’ll just say we live in a rough world and some have experienced it far worse than others. It’s easy to lose your faith in humanity when we dwell on the negatives and horrible events in these kids’ lives, but we never lost sight of the future and where the kids were able to go now. That’s something that will be a refrain for us in raising our kids, especially as they get older and (very gradually and at the appropriate times) learn their whole history: it doesn’t matter where you’ve been - what’s important is where you’re heading now.
5. Most parents who have their children removed by the state have one to two years to work their service plan. They have classes to go to, weekly meetings, tests to determine if they have been using illegal substances, therapy, etc. Weekly visits are standard, supervised at and hosted by the CPS office doing the investigation. There can be an extension for various reasons, but caseworkers and judges will not let the case run on indefinitely (even if it can seem that way sometime!).
4. Caseworkers and CASA workers and lawyers, oh my! You will have a large group of people working together on each child’s case to determine the best outcome. We ourselves have a personal caseworker who matches us with children, visits us in our homes, ensures that we have completed the proper training, etc. All children have their own caseworkers as well. Two of our kids had a CASA worker; in Texas, CASA stands for Court Appointed Special Advocate. These men and women dedicate themselves to the child’s case individually; they only take on one child or family at a time. This means that they become very attached to the kids and their well-being, present and future. They attend the supervised visits with the biological parents, therapy, home visits with the foster parents, and all court appearances. We cannot say enough about our first CASA worker, who bled her heart out for our two foster kids who were reunified with their biological parents. In addition, all children in foster care are represented by a lawyer, appointed by the court. All of these individuals are there to speak for the child and in his or her best interest, but they need the foster parents to be very communicative. As foster parents, you are with the children all day and night; you have the most interaction and deserve to have your voice be heard. One note in dealing with the team of the children’s representatives: while outcomes may be disappointing, stay confident that caseworkers, CASA workers, and lawyers are all trying their best and really do have the child’s best interests at heart.
3. They can go back. I inwardly roll my eyes when I see movies about
“normal” adoption, with birth parents coming back years later and attempting to
get custody of their child they placed for adoption. Once an adoption is
finalized, and papers are signed and filed, nothing, barring huge fraud or
unforeseen events, can overturn an adoption. Well, that’s “regular” adoption.
The rollercoaster of foster care adoption is another story. Each week, the
state of affairs can change, and it can change depending on whom you speak to.
We have had eleven foster children, and seven of them were placed back with
their biological families as the caseworker and judge determined that parents
were rehabilitated enough. Families involved in the foster care system just
need to go in with their eyes wide open, and help the communication process be
a positive one, no matter what happens in the end.
2. It’s so worth it. Through the hurt and trying times we have encountered as we have built our family, we have remained convinced of this calling we have to serve the children around us. No matter how painful it is for us, these kids and their families are going through horrible circumstances as well. Who are we to try to protect our own hearts when someone is in such dire need of a loving home? If not us, then who will step up?
1. All of the things they say about attachments and adoption are true: there will be no difference in your heart, no less love, for an adopted child compared with a biological child. I wondered if this would be a reality for me. Now, I sometimes am taken aback when others are sharing pregnancy and birth stories and I remember, “Wait, I didn’t experience that!” These four precious gifts are as much a part of us as any child could be – they just came later than birth! What a life-changing experience - for all of us!
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