Foster care - adoption or Fos-adopt

We are nearing the end of our journey with our adoption. Now that we are getting close to being done I feel like I can share knowlegably. I did not want to share until we had experienced the whole thing. We are not quite done but so close that I feel able to share.

I share this because I am passionate about what we have done and what needs to be done. I do not share this to make anyone feel guilty or to say that one way is the only way, only to share my observations and experiences.

My husband and I chose to do a foster-care adoption when we decided to adopt. This was not our first choice because we had a lot of misconceptions that a lot of poeple have.

The misconceptions that most poeple believe to be true for local adoptions are...

1. that is is hard to get a baby
2. that it has to be an open adoption
3. that the chances are high that you could get the baby taken from your home once placed there.

We thought these things and have run into many poeple that belive these things. We have found that they are not true. We started working with this really great agency that is Christian run and doing a wonderful job. After they described the process to us we knew it was a fit for us and our family.

The way it goes is this. You get a home study done just like for any adoption. You tell them what you are looking for in a child. We said, up to two years old, boy or girl, any race, healthy.
Then when all the paperwork is done you are in child-search. This is the point where the agency will look through their files and try to find a good match. When they find one that looks good, they call you, tell you the details, and you can say yes or no as to moving forward. If you say yes, they contact the child's social worker and then that social worker makes a decision on weather or not to set up a meeting.

A quick note.. we said yes to 8 or maybe 9 children and did not move onto the next stage with them. Sometimes there are a couple of families that send in their homestudy and they pick someone else, sometimes they just do not think you are a good fit.

But if they do pick you for a meeting, you go to what is called a disclosure meeting with the child's social worker and your social worker. For us we heard about our baby on a Wednesday, we met with the social worker on Thurdays morning, she liked us, thought we were a good fit and said we could pick her up on Friday morning. It went very fast. They tell us that is pretty typical once you get to that stage in the process.

When we picked her up we were then and are still the foster parents. We do have to go by the foster parent rules but they are not many and not a big deal. We have monthly planned visites from the social worker and there are a few other things we have to do. We feel like it is not that big of a deal compared to what we get for a little inconvience right now.

There are a few hearings that happen while the child is with you but we did not have to go to any of those. She has to be in our home for six months before we can file for the adoption and we are almost to that point. Then we will file adoption papers through the agency and get an asigned court day where we will go to court with the baby and she will become officially ours. She will get a new birth certificate with the name that we named her on it and it will all be done.

So, I am writing this because I want to spread that word about this great program that our state has set up. They have really worked to change things in the last four or five years and although things are not perfect I think it is a great step in the right direction. They are working to place children that are adoptable into families that are going to adopt them as soon as possible. They have made it very inexpensive. We payed a total of 1,500.00 dollars over a few months and will get all of that back because the government pays you while you are a foster parent. The child also gets medi-cal until the child turns eighteen. It is very afordable especially compared to overseas adoptions. The other big plus I think compared to international adoptions is that they get to be in your home while all the legal stuff is being worked out where in an international adoption you have to wait until that is all finalized before you can take them home.

There are so many kids in america that need to be adopted and I do not think enough people understand the process. When we asked our adoption agency what we could do for them because we felt like they have done so much for us they said, just to spread the word about fos-adopt. So, that is what I am trying to do.

I hope this makes sense and is not to boring and technical. I will write more about the feeling type stuff but I felt like I needed to get the facts out there. If you have any questions, at all, please feel free to ask me.