Foster Care Update: Moving Along

March 20, 2012 By 4 Comments

We are still slowly, buy surely moving along in our process to be licensed for foster care. It has taken so much longer that we ever expected it would. Some of that was our choice, not wanting it to happen before we felt ready. Some of it is just the county working at their own pace. At any rate, I have to believe that our timing will work out perfectly to match up with the child we are intended to care for.

Over the last couple of weeks we have been getting calls and emails from our licensing agent with the last pieces of information she needs to finish our application. We’ve been signing, scanning, and emailing back all the necessary forms. She also let us know that we need to retake the picture proving that we do have a car seat, the one we took was too dark to see well. All of our other required pictures turned out fine. Hopefully, that’s the last missing item.

We were encouraged that our agent is finally checking all of our references that we needed to provide. A couple of our friends let us know that they had received a call requesting information about us. It sure is exciting to know that she was at work on our file yesterday. She also informed us that we had passed our background checks! Not that we were too surprised about that one, but at least that part is finished!

We still need to have one more neighbor reference turned in. We were a little more worried about getting the neighbor references, only because we really don’t know our neighbors very well and weren’t sure how well they would be able to answer questions about us. We asked our next-door neighbor yesterday and she replied that she would be honored to help us out. Yay!

Once we get these last couple of items crossed off our list we will be submitted to the agency’s supervisors for final approval. We’ve been told that it could take anywhere from a couple of days to thirty days… depending on how eager they are to have another home available. Obviously, we are wishing for the quicker time frame, but thirty days isn’t too far off either. We are getting so close!

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What Is Foster Care?

February 6, 2012 By 12 Comments

We are so excited that we are getting closer and closer to becoming licensed for foster care. In fact, tomorrow morning we have our home study scheduled! Our licensing agent will be checking to see that we’ve made all of the necessary provisions for a child to safely stay in our home.

So, what exactly is foster care? The more we talk with people, the more we realize that people don’t really understand what we are talking about when we say that we want to do foster care. That’s fine… in a perfect world there would never be a need for foster care. Here is the (paraphrased) definition we were given in our MAPP class:

Foster care is a protective service for children who have been abused, neglected, mistreated, or whose parents are otherwise unable to care for them due to illness or death. The child is given a family life experience in an agency-approved, certified, and licensed home for a temporary period of time. The primary goal of foster care is to provide safety and permanency. Foster parents are often in a position to help children and their families reunify if safety and well-being can be achieved or to assist in making adoption plans or other permanent plans for the children if reunification is not an option.

For example, (maybe not a good one-but it’s all can think of) in the movies when the police arrest a parent for some reason and then take the children back to the police station with them. Unless a relative of the child can be reached, plans are made to place the children in a foster home for the time being.

We really don’t mind answering questions, but we get really confused when people ask if we have a child picked out already. The answer is no. If someone makes a report that a child is being abused or neglected, the child gets removed from that situation as soon as possible. There is no child waiting in an unfit home for the past year while we get ready to be licensed.

Foster child

Instead, once we get licensed we are essentially “on-call” for when a situation arises. From what we’ve been told that will probably happen almost immediately, maybe even same-day. When we receive a call we can choose based on whatever factors we feel are important (such as age or type of abuse) if we feel like we are capable of caring for that specific child.

Hopefully this makes our mission a little clearer. 🙂

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