What’s Next?

We are back from a two week blog break…of course, we are not too awesome at updating our blog regularly; but we allowed ourselves to not feel the pressure of needing to post something, especially since we do not currently have kids to post about! :)

It has been about a month since our kids reunified with their parents. We’ve seen “Maggie” once and “Carson” once. (We hope to share our visits in an upcoming post!) In that month we have taken the time and put in the effort to grieve well, for our well-being and for the well-being of the next foster child we will welcome into our home!

We have been discussing the next chapter in our foster parenting journey, and we have narrowed it down to these options:

Option: Foster Care
We currently have a post-it on our file with the county that says we are taking a one-month break and are not taking any placements at this time. All we need to do is call and have that post-it taken off and we will most likely get a call in less than a week (from our past experience with both kids) for a new placement. This is the option we have experience with, the placement can be anywhere from a couple months to years! (Maggie’s placement was 3 months, Carson’s placement was 11 months)

Option: Way Station
We can sign up to be a Way Station foster family. This means we would be available on an “on-call” basis to receive children immediately following a removal, helping the child avoid placement at the local children’s center. We would be considered an emergency placement for a maximum of 30 days, with a goal of 10 days to find a relative, non-related extended family member or a long-term foster home. This is a relatively new program development where the family would be strictly Way Station only. While we were in the regular foster care option, both Carson and Maggie were emergency placements that we were happy to keep for more than a few weeks.

Option: Adoption
We talk with our Adoption Worker and fill-out a detailed form that shares with the worker what health, behavioral, developmental, and background issues we are open to having in a child. We then wait to be “matched” with a child whose history closely matches our requests and would possibly work well with our family dynamics as displayed in our Home Study Report (a written report of our lives as taken through interviews during our licensing process). This option can take a long time depending on how open we are to the issues presented. The child can be legally free for adoption already, or we can go with what is called Concurrent Care and  take the risk of being placed with a child that does not yet have their parental rights terminated, but looks like that would happen in the future.

Option: Foster-to-Adopt
We welcome a child who is in foster care but appears to be on the likely path to have his or her parental rights terminated due to the parents not making wise decisions in the reunification process.The termination of parental rights will then allow the child to be available for adoption. But we are not “matched” with this child, it will be a child who needs a foster home and we will learn of their health, behavioral, developmental, and background issues as we get to know them in our home. Of course, there is risk to this option just as in Concurrent Care adoption because the parents can make good decisions and be able to reunify.

4 options, all have their pros and cons.

As we have been discussing these options we have had to re-evaluate the principles that we want to guide us in our work with “the system.” One of these principles is that we want to minimize the number of placements these kids will have. Every move that these kids make is one more instance of trauma and loss, and we want to spare these kids from that.

We are thrilled that we were the only placement that Carson and Maggie had. They were not bounced around to multiple families or children’s centers, but they were with us until they were able to reunify. We think this is a big reason why they continued to grow and thrive during their time away from their biological parents.

However, the difficulty with wanting to be the only placement these kids ever have is that most kids who enter the foster system end up reunifying with their families. So, if we really want to adopt a child the most efficient thing to do would be to find a child who has been in the system long enough for it to become clear that reunification is no longer likely. Minimizing the number of moves a child makes is important, but it’s not the most important thing we can do. You could argue that the kids who have been bounced around to multiple placements need a safe and loving family the most.

So, what’s next?

Well, we are still talking through these issues (and working through some delays with the county), but we hope to have kids in our home soon.