I was shocked to visit my blog page and see that I have not posted since October. Eeek! Where has the time gone? Well I have been a pretty busy lady and I have a new treat for you. Hands Across the Water (meaning me and my co-worker Katie Tatro) and 94.3 REWIND of Monroe have teamed up to create a 30 minute radio show dedicated to foster care and adoption. The show will air on Sunday mornings at 9:30am. You can also listen to the show anytime by clicking on this link
Radio Show. If you like what you hear, a new show will air each month with new guests and new topics related to foster care and adoption.
Other places to access the link to the new radio show include:
Hands Across the Water on Facebook
Monroe County Coalition for Foster Care
Both are great pages for keeping up-to-date on issues related to foster care and adoption.
For live streaming of this wonderful radio station 94.3 REWIND visit the website at
MPACT.
I promise to return soon with a new blog post. Hang in there!
Kristen
Hi! I'm thrilled to have stumbled across your blog. I live in Monroe and my husband and I are recently licensed foster parents waiting (impatiently!) for a placement.
ReplyDeleteWe were previously approved in 2012 as an SIL home through LSSM and had two refugee youth placements, one emergency and one long-term who left us about a year ago. Our bio daughter was born in the summer of 2013, and not long after our refugee foster son left, we decided to pursue obtaining our full foster license. We became fully licensed with LSSM early in January and got three calls for placement within a few weeks; two of them we denied, and the third was placed elsewhere even as I was taking the call and accepting the placement. After that, I started thinking about the logistics of working with an agency two counties north, with the potential (as would have happened if we'd gotten the third placement) for having to drive over an hour one-way for parent visits. With two working adults and a toddler in tow, it didn't seem like the smartest plan, so we transferred our license to Monroe DHS.
Unfortunately, I feel like, while we're logistically much saner being close to home, we've just decimated our placement chances. We are licensed for just one child, but we also prefer a child under age 2, and even more preferentially, younger than our daughter. I have served as a CASA volunteer and believe strongly in the goal of reunification, but we also want to be able to be open to adopting should reunification fail, and we feel strongly about not adopting out of birth order. Therefore, we don't want to put ourselves in the position of accepting placements to whom we're not willing to potentially provide a lifetime commitment (especially if the child is with us for a long period of time and we bond with him/her). We have not had practice in parenting older children (other than the refugee SIL placements, who were 16 [emergency placement] and not-quite-18 to just-over-19 [long-term placement], and that is definitely older than we would take right now), but I have worked in early childcare with kids between 2-4 years; with Girl Scouts between the ages of 5 and 9; with tutoring children between 7 and 16 years; and I work as a middle school teacher with kids from 11-15 years old, so I don't believe I am completely unequipped to deal with an older child. It's simply that fear of not being willing to adopt the older child.
So I guess I basically have four questions for you: 1. Would our chances be any better at receiving a quick foster placement for 1 child aged 0-2 through HATW if we transferred our license a second time? 2. If so, and if we transferred, would we be able to have parent visits at the Monroe branch rather than the Ann Arbor branch? 3. Are we being silly to try to stick to such a restricted age range when we could be doing a greater good more quickly by expanding our range to 0-12 or 0-14? 4. Should we stay with DHS and just expand our age range and bank on reunification saving us from having to tell a child that they're going to be placed with yet another family for adoption?
Mostly, this waiting is killing me and I am starting to feel a little desperate, so I'm hoping for a little guidance to help me figure out what would be the better course of action right now.
Hi Susan, I am so glad that you found my blog and your questions are wonderful. I think the waiting part of foster care is the worst part of the process. It is just plain hard. Transferring your license to HATW doesn't make any sense because we work directly with Monroe DHS and often do placements for them too. Essentially DHS and HATW are in the same pool of available children. The main reason that your placement calls have dried up is the 0-2 year’s old age range. All agencies have the largest pool of foster homes in this age range so the wait is much, much longer. There are several ways to increase your chance of a placement call in that age range that I recommend. Opening your license to children of all races and being open to taking a sibling group are some of the top variables to look at. I also recommend being open to children with some medical needs. Often newborns in the system are born addicted to drugs and they will fall into this category. It is okay to remain right where you are in the 0-2 range and just be prepared to wait. We do need homes in this range when babies come into care and there is nothing wrong with sticking to your criteria. More than anything, you should do what is right for your family because ultimately, that will be the in the best interests of a foster child too. If an agency places a child that you already know that you are not going to adopt then that is just another disruption for the child in the long run and more trauma. Remember that there are no right and wrong answers in foster care. You should always do what is best for your family first. Also remember that each year your child grows is another year that you can expand on your license.
ReplyDeleteOne last thought for you is that it is okay to foster just to foster and not to expect it to lead to adoption. There are many children who return home to their birth family or get placed with a relative. Unfortunately, there is no way to tell ahead of time what where the permanency plan will be headed. Respite care is also another valuable way to help other foster families.
Thank you for your reply. That does make sense to just stay with DHS - I was wondering if we'd be looking at a bigger pool from other counties, but I suppose you have plenty of families around your other locations, as well, and it wouldn't make sense to do home visits for, say, a Washtenaw family in Monroe.
ReplyDeleteWe're already open to all races and mild medical needs; I figure chances are decent, being in Monroe, that (unfortunately) we would be looking at taking a baby born addicted and we're okay with handling that. We're also open to taking an older kid who identifies as LGBTQ; we just haven't opened it up to all older kids at this point. I wish we could take a sibling group, but we're limited by vehicle space - neither of us has a car that can hold more than two car seats at once, and one seat is obviously already spoken for.
I would be okay to foster just to foster, but that's the thing, right? There's no telling at the beginning which direction things are going to go, and if we're not both on board with adopting a child older than our bio kid, it's going to be rough on everyone if the permanency plan changes. But then I also keep thinking that if we get a baby and the permanency plan DOESN'T change, that's going to be hard for me, too - we do want to adopt out of foster care, versus privately or internationally, but I'd prefer it to happen sooner rather than later so we're not adopting, say, a preschooler when our daughter is in early elementary and used to being an only child. And if we foster a baby and the baby goes home, we're starting all over again. I've thought about going back to a private agency to have an adoption homestudy done so that we can go straight to the MARE or AdoptUSKids photolistings and seek an adoption match there, but I don't know how much faster that would end up being versus fostering and keeping our fingers crossed (which means we are obviously then biased, and that doesn't seem like the best thing for a foster child, either).
Actually, private agencies like Hands Across the Water often work in multiple counties. We actively serve children and families in Jackson, Monroe, Washtenaw, Macomb, Wayne, and Oakland counties. The difference is that we are receiving placement calls from Department of Human Services from each county. I guess from that perspective, we serve a broader pool of children, but we try and keep them as close to home as possible. If I placed a child in your home from Wayne county in your home in Monroe county then visitation would require a lot of traveling on your part. Some people are willing to do it and others are not. My next post will be on transferring a license because I think this is becoming a common issue in foster care.
ReplyDeleteThe rest of your post sums up the main challenge in adoption/foster care that I call, "waiting for the unknown." There is just no way for an agency to make the waiting process any easier or to define when just the right child for your home will appear. I can honestly say that the wait will be worth it and the right child will come your way. I have seen it happen many times around here. All you can do is make the best choices for your family and just wait for a call. It will come. I promise. I am also sure that you will be able to handle whatever comes your way. It takes a strength and bravery to get this far in the system and you are almost there. If a child has to leave your home, it will happen slowly and you will be able to handle it. Many parents are wondering the same things that you are. Will it break my heart? Will my family be able to handle this? Will I ever get the call? The answer to all these questions is yes. Just hang in there and it will happen.