Foster Care Announcement!!

We have now finished all the steps to become foster parents! From hours and hours of classes to home studies and interviews, we are done! We are currently waiting on ALL the paperwork to finish being put into the system, which should be any day now. Then we will just wait for the phone to ring and God’s plan to prevail.

With fostering we may end up having a child for a night, months, years, we just don’t know. We would love to have a child become a permanent member of our family but the initially goal of foster care is to reunite children with their biological family if that is possible.

During this process we were required to fill out a million pieces of paper. (I may have slightly exaggerated) some of the paperwork was a checklist on what type of child we would accept. This was probably the hardest, most time consuming one for us. How do you decide what helpless child you will say yes to, and which ones you will say no to. HOW DO YOU SAY NO? This paper was a few pages long with several different categories and tiny little boxes to check. After a lot of time and prayer we decided that for now we will accept up to two children under the age of 4 years old, and either gender. We would love to adopt but that may not happen so we plan to take care of and love these children for however long we can.

To complete this process and pass our home study we had to have certain things done around the house. For example, the outlet covers were a suggestion from the fire department before they came out to do their inspections. All the neighborhood children loved that the fire truck paid them a visit and allowed them to get an up close look. We also had to have both an infant car seat and a toddler/booster seat. That is why there are two in the video we shared, one of them converts and works from 5-100 pounds. We also had to have a crib and regular bed. We didn’t have a twin so we used a full size bed for now. Another requirement was baby gates installed at the top and bottom of our stairs. There were plenty of other things we had to do but they didn’t make it into the video.

So incase you missed it here is the announcement video we shared on social media.

We have been told by the agency that since we are willing to accept two kids that there is a good chance we will have two in our house. However it could be any combination, we just don’t know until they call. Four year old, one year old, new born, boys, girls, one of each, twins, siblings, not related at all. Literally ANYTHING. So we have been trying to prepare as much as possible but there will probably be a mild panic when we get that first phone call.

Our home assessor told us that in our area new foster parents wait on average about two months before receiving a placement. The longest to expect would be 4 or 5 months but she felt that for our situation since we are willing to take multiple children and up to age four that it wouldn’t be that long. The truth is you really just never know until the phone rings.

We are excited! We have been so very blessed with everyone’s love and support through all of this! THANK YOU ALL!!!