Adopting a Child Through the State Foster Care System

With the astronomical costs of adopting a child through a private or international agency, many people are thinking of turning to foster/adoption with the state.

Our family has a foster/adopt license, and has fostered more than 50 children over the years, adopted twice, and will soon be adopting a third time, and I thought I would pass on the things I have learned.

The first thing to do is to call your local Department of Family and Protective Services. They will give you information on the next orientation meeting in your area. At this meeting, you will be given the requirements for becoming a foster/adopt home in your county. This will let you know if you qualify. If you find that you do, then you will be told about the different agencies that you can apply with.

Once you have chosen an agency, you will be given information on the next set of classes you will be required to attend. Various counties and states do this different ways. It usually requires around 20 hours to complete, and can be once a week, several times a week or evening over a few weekends. These classes are very informative and vital to becoming a foster/adoptive parent. Depending on who teaches, they can also be very entertaining. Our family enjoyed our training.

Once your training is done, and you have your certificate, you will need to get CPR and water safety certificates. You and all members of your family over a certain age will need to get physicals and TB tests. The state will run a criminal background check, and a check to see if you have ever had a CPS case filed against you. You will have to get a home health and fire inspection. You will need a fire escape plan posted in a visible place, and fire extinguishers on all floors of your home. All your animals will need to be vaccinated.

You will be required to get references from any grown children you have, and also several family members, and several people who know your family well.

Then comes the all important home study.

A social worker from your county will come out, or the county may hire a person specifically trained to do home studies. This can be a little intrusive, depending on the worker. You will fill out several forms before hand and turn them in. This will cover your family, marriage, and financial situation. It will ask you what age children you are willing to care for, and the range of disabilities, if any. Be honest, because these are the types of children you will get calls for.

The social worker who comes out for your study will go over these forms with you, and ask more detailed questions. They will talk to you and your spouse alone, and will also talk to your children alone. They will want to see your house, and especially the rooms the new children will be staying in. They may take measurements, as a certain amount of space is required for each child.

Once this is all done, all paperwork is sent to various places and supervisors. It may take as long as a month to make the rounds of everywhere it has to go. Once it has landed on the last desk, you license will either be issued or denied.

Once your license is issued, you will begin to get calls asking you to take a child, sometimes as quickly as the next day!

Somewhere in this process, you will decide what you want to do with your license. Are you interested in fostering a child, fostering to adopt a child, or only in adoption?

If you decide to go straight foster care, then children will be placed in your home no matter what their circumstances. The state may not have any idea if the parents will be able to work a plan to get their child back. They will only know they got a call, danger to a child seemed immediate, and they removed the child and need a home for them. Sometimes the only information you will get is the sex and the age, and sometimes the age will be wrong. A child will come to your house at all hours of the day or night, unless you specify they cannot call you nights or weekends. This child will be very, very scared, and depending on what's going on, they may be dirty, have lice, have no clothes, and need medical attention. The state usually has a 'rainbow room' where people donate supplies, and they may or may not be able to bring you diapers, formula and clothes from that room. Sometimes, the family of the child will pack a suitcase, and you will have everything you need.

The child may remain a couple of days, or a couple of years. Within two weeks of removal, the state goes to court and shows the judge just cause for keeping the child in care, and the judge makes a decision whether to leave the child in care or send them home. If the child remains in care, depending on the state, the parents usually have one year to work the plan the state gives them to get their child back. The parents have this time by law. Many times, an inexperienced foster parent will just be sure when they go to court the judge will terminate the parents rights because they are not working their plan, but this rarely happens. The parents will get their year, whether they are making progress or not, as long as they are visiting the child.

If you only want straight adoption, you will probably not get an infant from the state. Termination of the parental rights must be done first. This is a long process, and as I said before, the parents by law get a year, and in some states more, to work a plan to have their children returned to them. If you don't want to foster first, then you will have to wait until that termination of parental rights (TPR) happens, and the appeal period has passed. In Texas, the appeal period is three months. So you are looking, at the very least, at 15 months, from the time the child comes into care, until the child is placed for adoption.

If you choose to foster/adopt, then when your foster child is released for adoption, you have first option over a family member (which have usually all been ruled out) or a family with a sibling, to adopt the child. Foster families are almost always chosen as the adoptive home.

I always greatly encourage a family looking to adopt through the state to do foster care while they wait for an adoptable child. For one thing, it greatly increases your chances of adopting soon. It also increases your chances of getting to raise the child from a young age, depending on what age you ask for in your home study.

But also, I believe it's just the right thing to do. Many times, people will say to me, "I could never do what you are doing, I am just too sensitive, and I couldn't give a child back." That's what people say. What I HEAR, is "I could never do what you do, I am just too selfish. I would rather a hurting, scared, vulnerable child go without a home, than risk my own heart being broken if they have to go back."

And it DOES break your heart when a child leaves your home. But in the meantime, you have helped God in his work, by giving a place for 'the least of these'. You have provided a safe haven, at the risk of totally breaking your own heart, to a little child in what has to be the worst time of their lives, when they are separated from their mommies and daddies and their homes and pets and toys.

In doing this, in risking your own heart, you may end up with a forever child, a child who needs a permanent home, and you will both be blessed!!