Monday, October 29, 2012

Our wait is over!

We had our first placement! The first one was just a respite placement but it was fun and we adored the kids :) Before I go any further let me explain the type of placements that we are taking;

Transitional Respite- Sometimes when case workers remove children from a home they do not have a foster home available to immediately bring them to. So while they look for a foster home they bring them to a respite family (like us!) Who help them understand what is happening and cope a little bit. These placements will usually be for just a few days or sometimes only a single night. Then the children move on to a more permanent foster home and work on reunification with the biological family.

Respite- Foster parents have 14 days a year that they can put the foster children who are with them into a respite home so that they can go out of town or if they have a medical issue or something like that. The state pays the respite family to babysit so that they know the kids are in a good licensed home. These are also usually a short coupe days.

Foster- These children would be placed in our home for a longer period. anywhere from 3-12 months. They could also potentially become available for us to adopt in which case we most likely would. During the time they are with us we would be helping them to work on reuniting with there parents. The parents spend that time going through intensive therapy and work to reach multiple steps to earn the kids back. They get to see the children for one hour once a week for visitation while they do the work.

So now that I got that out of the way, we had a respite placement! It was just for Friday, Saturday and Sunday. We had freedom who was Three and her ten year old brother, Red. They were great kids and we had so much fun. We were lucky enough to have them during Halloween weekend while we were doing pumpkins and what not.
There is a good chance we will have them again :)




Thursday, October 25, 2012

A little good news

         I intend to eventually be able to post pictures and write a little about each child that comes into our lives on this blog. So far we are yet to have one of these so called children. I was beginning to think no one wanted us to have any kids :( Luckily that is not the case.
      Adoption update: We have been inquiring on child after child trying to be considered for adoption of many kids who are already legally free ( Parents rights have already been relinquished). We have gotten some what far in the process for a few children but so far have not been chosen. I am attempting to be patient and understanding when we are not chosen. I know that they are very picky when it comes to who gets these kids and they are right to do so. These kids have had it tough and deserve to be very carefully placed. I will continue to inquire on child after child and keep my fingers crossed that we will soon be the best match for the right child!
          Foster care update: We have now been licensed and waiting for a placement for 4 months. We were asked to take the 3 different short term placements but none of them worked out for one reason or another. We had not however been asked to take any ong term foster placement. I had a meeting with our case worker, Elaine on Monday and I got a lot of refreshing news. A big part of why we had not been given placements was because she had not updated our profile with a new assessment. We were apparently supposed to have this meeting a long while ago but she had been busy and not gotten to us. Now that we are all updated we should start seeing a lot more placement opportunities.
         Elaine also spoke with me about Davids previous rug use. She mentioned that her boss Cody was wanting to wait until Davids 3 year sobriety anniversary before giving us any real serious foster placements that could turn into adoptions. His 3 year is in two weeks :) I am very proud of him and the man that he has become. He is so much different now and has grown so much that I really never think about those days anymore.  Elaine said that she is going to start calling us first with all of the short term respite cases that she gets and we can take the ones that are good fits for us. That will give us some experience so that as soon as a Foster placement comes up for us we will be ready to go!

Updates to come soon I hope!