Thursday, January 30, 2014
Ready and Watiting...
We are in a holding pattern. We have completed all our paperwork, had our inspection, done our interviews, supplied references and all "additional information" requested, yet our license has yet to be submitted to the OLCR (the state agency that actually issues the license). The hold up is all about our training. We somehow ended up with no documentation of the training we completed the first time we were licensed. We remember getting certificates, but we can't find them, and our original agency is dragging their feet on supplying our new agency with our file. The file is required to have that documentation, so as soon as our worker gets her hands on the file we should be good to go. We hope. *sigh*
Sunday, January 26, 2014
Getting started...all over again.
We are on the brink of being officially licensed for foster care...again. We actually started this journey eight years ago when we became foster parents for the first time.
It had been a dream of my husbands to be a foster parent ever since he became friends with a foster child who had been adopted by her foster family. He got to see first hand how they changed her life, and he wanted to be that family for someone else. He is amazing like that. I however wasn't excited about the idea...or even interested...at all. I was one of those people who believed all the horror stories and all the myths about why you should never, ever, consider foster care. THEN, one day shortly after the birth of our second little girl (2 babies in two years!) we started talking about adoption. Now, this had always been my dream. I wanted to adopt internationally. I had this dream for as long as I can remember. I am not even sure where the idea came from originally. I just knew it would be awesome! Oh, the idealism! So, we started researching, and soon discovered that financially this was not going to be an option for quite some time to come, if ever. That is when my wonderful husband brought up foster care. He convinced me to at least look into it. So I did. That is when I realized just how many children there are out there that need good homes! So many just waiting for a family! My heart broke, and it changed. I was on board! We decided our next child would come to our family through foster care adoption. We contacted an agency and we began our paperwork. Our licensing worker was astounded at how fast we got things done! We had our license in a record breaking 2 months! At the time I did not fully appreciate her amazement, now I realize how truly blessed we were to have her working so hard for us and just how crazy-fast it really was! As we had two very small little ones (1 1/2 and 6mos) to consider, we initially were licensed for 0-5yr old children. It took almost two months after our license was done before we got our first phone call (we were later told that no one knew we were ready!). We had our first placement, and the adventure was on! The next three years were a roller coaster ride. We had 10 children come through our home from 8 different placements (2 sibling sets), and eventually expanded out license so we could take older girls. We dealt with prenatal drug exposure, fetal alcohol syndrome, developmental delays, seizures, behavioral issues, ICWA (Indian Child Welfare Act), system failures, and all the other "joys" of being a foster parent, as well as the crushing sadness of the death of one of our children who had returned home to her family. We also got see some reunification successes, watch delayed children make huge strides to exceed expectations, and know that we played a part in giving these little ones a better start. Although our original goal was adoption we never did have the opportunity to adopt any of the children we cared for, and so when we found out we were expecting our third biological child we decided to take a break for awhile. Our young family had been through a lot of ups and downs and we felt like we needed to take a step back and focus on our little ones.
We always expected to come back to foster care, when the time was right. A while back we started feeling that the Lord was telling us it was time. So we started the process, only to be stalled when my dear husband's employment ran out. So we waited until we were once again employed. Only to stall out once more due to the restrictions of his schedule vs. training. We started again, only to have our worker leave our agency for other employment and the new case manager was super unhelpful and had no clue how to re-license us, so she wanted us to start all over from scratch which meant NONE of our past training would be counted and we would have to attend 10 weeks of scheduled classes! So...we tried another agency. Thank heavens we did!! We got a case manager who knew exactly what to do and got us moving right away, with half the training hours! We are now only days away from submitting our homestudy! Whew! It has been crazy!
As for this new little blog out here in the blog-o-sphere...There has been a persistent niggling in the back of my mind for weeks now, telling me I should blog about our journey. I have learned not to ignore persistent niggles, so here I am, documenting the craziness! Good luck to us!
It had been a dream of my husbands to be a foster parent ever since he became friends with a foster child who had been adopted by her foster family. He got to see first hand how they changed her life, and he wanted to be that family for someone else. He is amazing like that. I however wasn't excited about the idea...or even interested...at all. I was one of those people who believed all the horror stories and all the myths about why you should never, ever, consider foster care. THEN, one day shortly after the birth of our second little girl (2 babies in two years!) we started talking about adoption. Now, this had always been my dream. I wanted to adopt internationally. I had this dream for as long as I can remember. I am not even sure where the idea came from originally. I just knew it would be awesome! Oh, the idealism! So, we started researching, and soon discovered that financially this was not going to be an option for quite some time to come, if ever. That is when my wonderful husband brought up foster care. He convinced me to at least look into it. So I did. That is when I realized just how many children there are out there that need good homes! So many just waiting for a family! My heart broke, and it changed. I was on board! We decided our next child would come to our family through foster care adoption. We contacted an agency and we began our paperwork. Our licensing worker was astounded at how fast we got things done! We had our license in a record breaking 2 months! At the time I did not fully appreciate her amazement, now I realize how truly blessed we were to have her working so hard for us and just how crazy-fast it really was! As we had two very small little ones (1 1/2 and 6mos) to consider, we initially were licensed for 0-5yr old children. It took almost two months after our license was done before we got our first phone call (we were later told that no one knew we were ready!). We had our first placement, and the adventure was on! The next three years were a roller coaster ride. We had 10 children come through our home from 8 different placements (2 sibling sets), and eventually expanded out license so we could take older girls. We dealt with prenatal drug exposure, fetal alcohol syndrome, developmental delays, seizures, behavioral issues, ICWA (Indian Child Welfare Act), system failures, and all the other "joys" of being a foster parent, as well as the crushing sadness of the death of one of our children who had returned home to her family. We also got see some reunification successes, watch delayed children make huge strides to exceed expectations, and know that we played a part in giving these little ones a better start. Although our original goal was adoption we never did have the opportunity to adopt any of the children we cared for, and so when we found out we were expecting our third biological child we decided to take a break for awhile. Our young family had been through a lot of ups and downs and we felt like we needed to take a step back and focus on our little ones.
We always expected to come back to foster care, when the time was right. A while back we started feeling that the Lord was telling us it was time. So we started the process, only to be stalled when my dear husband's employment ran out. So we waited until we were once again employed. Only to stall out once more due to the restrictions of his schedule vs. training. We started again, only to have our worker leave our agency for other employment and the new case manager was super unhelpful and had no clue how to re-license us, so she wanted us to start all over from scratch which meant NONE of our past training would be counted and we would have to attend 10 weeks of scheduled classes! So...we tried another agency. Thank heavens we did!! We got a case manager who knew exactly what to do and got us moving right away, with half the training hours! We are now only days away from submitting our homestudy! Whew! It has been crazy!
As for this new little blog out here in the blog-o-sphere...There has been a persistent niggling in the back of my mind for weeks now, telling me I should blog about our journey. I have learned not to ignore persistent niggles, so here I am, documenting the craziness! Good luck to us!
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