(**Updated: Any other foster moms who read this, can you send me your favorite book suggestions for both kids and adult on foster care or adoption?! THANK YOU!!**)
I’m always super grateful when Kelly does a link up for adoption or foster care – today is no exception.
And before I get to share any of our story with where we are currently at with foster care, let me recap the last three years quickly for you.
August 2011: Completed a home study with private agency in a mere 3 weeks (fastest on record – haha!)
August 2011-May 2013: Just to mention it right off the bat, obviously not all adoption experiences go like ours. Our first adoption was great, there are good people out there in the private world! We had so much “interest” during our time with the agency, lots of “almost” matches and even meetings for lunch with birth mom’s (and their families). Let’s just fast forward to the end of the whole two year$$$$$$ with them and give it to you straight – Our social workers were not honest with us, they had us meeting with women before they had offered them the proper counseling services or simple things like a pregnancy verification. One girl I had lunch with twice, was supposedly 9 months pregnant, but it turns out she wasn’t pregnant at all. In the end, after an especially irrational case we were handed (plus other things I don’t think it right to mention in a public forum), we decided we should leave quietly and pursue something else because this was not a fit for our family. It wasn’t until 6 months later that we found out the agency had tanked and every one we had worked with was fired for unethical practices.
June 2013-January 2014: After being on the bad side of adoption experiences, we finally had the push we needed to jump into foster care. All the complaints we heard about foster; bad social workers, frustrating birthparents, etc.. Been there, done that – and paid people a lot of money to do it to us! HA! Could foster care really be any worse? We had the best experience with all the county workers and completed all our PRIDE trainings, then continued on to get licensed with an FFA.
January 20th – Now: Waiting for a placement!
Our hope is to adopt through foster care, although we believe it is valuable either way. We especially have a heart for sibling groups, and are waiting to hear back on a few different sets. We are even moving into a bigger place this week just to make room in case!
I continue to be surprised by my own irrational optimism with adoption and foster care. I don’t even flinch anymore when people start in on the stories of kids killing their foster parents. (Wish I had a dollar for every time it came up though, that would be really something!) Despite what we have been through the past three years, the money, the time, the horrible people – I don’t know that I would change any of it. I mean, I hope that they were changed by it for the better, and I still don’t know how to make sense of most of it, but if it hadn’t happened there is a good possibility we wouldn’t have got here.
We are HUGE fans of this short film on foster care. If you haven’t seen it grab an entire box of tissues and watch.
