Before I Start: A Great Resource
I highly recommend the Foster Adoption Podcast http://www.fosteradoption.org to anyone who wants to learn more about fost-adoption. If someone you know is looking to fost-adopt, learning about this process is one of the really important things you can do to help support them. This podcast taught me a LOT about what this process is like, and I highly recommend it.
What Is Fost-Adoption?
There are two major types of foster parents: regular foster parents who take care of kids who are probably going to reunify with their birth family, and fost-adopt parents who are looking to be a forever home for kids on the path to adoption.
All children in foster care are there because of some kind of abuse or neglect. Neglect is far more common. The goal of foster care is to help children reunify with their birth families once they have created a safe home. But there are many cases where the birth family is unable to provide a safe home, and that's when they start looking for a forever home with an adoptive family. The adoption is finalized after the kids have been in the adoptive home for a while and the kids are thriving and the parents are thriving. Bottom line, though, is that they don't want kids to be in foster care for more than a year and a half, so if the birth family is not going to provide a safe home, they want the kids to be adopted and in a stable, healthy situation as soon as possible.
What Does The Process Look Like?
There are four major court events for a fost-adopt kid or sibling group:
1. After kids are detained
A few days after the kids are detained from the birth family, there is a hearing to determine what kind of services the birth family needs, and whether the kids can reunify with the birth family in the meantime or if they should remain in foster care for the time being. Typically the kids remain in foster care and they set a date for another hearing in six months to see how the birth family is doing.
2. Reunification or termination of reunification services
After six months of the kids being in foster care and the birth family having services (possibly parenting classes, drug or alcohol treatment, etc), the judge will typically rule to either reunify the kids with the birth family if birth family has done everything they were supposed to do, or terminate reunification services. In other words, the birth family isn't holding up their end of the bargain, so why should we pay for services anymore?
Note: If the judge rules to terminate reunification services, they start looking for a forever family for the kids. This means they start by looking for kin (grandma, uncle, etc) who can provide a safe and healthy home for the kids. If that doesn't work, they look for a fost-adopt family to place the kids with. Can the birth family turn things around during this period? Absolutely. But if they weren't able to turn things around with the help of reunification services, it's very unlikely they will be able to do so without them.
3. Termination of Parental Rights
Once the kids are thriving in their fost-adopt home, and the fost-adopt family is doing well, this is when there is a hearing for the termination of parental rights. Before this happens, it is still possible (however unlikely) that the court could rule to reunify the kids with the birth family. After termination of parental rights, the fost-adopt parents can apply for adoption.
4. Adoption
I don't know much about the process of finalizing the adoption, but I do know that once the adoption is finalized, that is it. You are now the legal parents of these kids, and you get issued a new birth certificate for them. It is now up to you to decide what level of contact with the birth family (if any) is healthy for your kids. I will write more about contact with the birth family later, because there are a lot of good reasons to have at least minimal contact.
How Much Does It Cost?*
Pretty much nothing. The state pays for all your training, the home study fees, the legal fees, the kids' health insurance until they are 18 (yes, even if they are adopted and no longer in the foster system), and a monthly stipend until they are 18. That stipend depends on the child's needs. My understanding is that it can easily range from $100-800 per month, on the higher end if the child has significant and ongoing medical needs.
They will also offer free post-placement services, including attachment therapy, behavioral therapy, family therapy, occupational therapy, parent child interaction therapy, and other services as needed. Additionally they offer respite care to help prevent foster parent burn out - they find a foster family for the kids to stay with for 1-30 days (usually 2 days if parents just need a mental break).
On top of all this, there is also a 10K tax credit per child. Not tax deductable - a tax credit. Meaning that's money you would normally pay in taxes that you don't have to pay. You can take that amount in one year or spread it over several years.
*What costs and services are provided to you may vary from state to state. This is my understanding of what is provided in California.
Are Kids In Foster Care Damaged?
All children in foster care are there because of some kind of abuse or neglect. In most cases it is neglect. Of the kids who have been abused, it is most often a combination of emotional and physical abuse. Sexual abuse is less common. No matter what, any kids in foster care will have some sort of trauma that they need to heal from.
But will they ever really get over it? In most cases, when kids are given a healthy home with good resources and help, they heal and then thrive. Kids are incredibly resilient. They may always have questions about their past, but they can live very normal lives after adoption and grow up to be healthy, happy, well-adjusted people. Social workers know which kids are going to have trouble attaching or have significant behavioral needs, and they do not sugar coat it. As fost-adopt parents, you have to decide what you are comfortable with and what you aren't, and be up front with your social worker.
What Kinds of Kids Are Available?
Most kids in foster care have siblings. For this reason, we have decided we would like to adopt a sibling pair. Yes, this means we are going from 0 to 2 kids. Yes, this means we are helping two kids heal from some kind of trauma which may need to be handled differently based on their differing developmental stages. Still, there are some really good reasons to adopt siblings, which I will write more about later, but here are a few: much shorter wait time, much less traumatizing for the kids, significantly less complicated than adopting two single children at two different times, adopted kids (especially transracially adopted) benefit from having a member of their family that looks like them, more possible to get kids at younger age.
There are kids with special needs, but there are also kids who are typically developing. Again, this is something they are very, very upfront about. The last thing they want is to put a child in your home that you aren't prepared to take care of and then they have to transition the child to another home. Some kids with special needs include kids who were drug-exposed in utero. The racial demographics of kids in foster care vary from county to county, and you can easily find those stats online.
It is possible to adopt outside your county, but you do have to be certified in that county in order to adopt from it. If you are working with a foster family agency that is certified in multiple counties, then you will get approved for adopting in each of those counties.
Phew. More later. Starting here.
