Back by Popular Demand

In case you did not know, well since we did not tell you so I guess it is our fault, but honestly this really just happened, we are going through training to become foster parents. Charles and I have been discussing our desire to adopt and started to look into some agencies and the process. Well, turns out that Maggie is too young to start the process for some agencies, that in combination to the cost factor we just would not be able to do adoption (international) in the near future. So we put this on the back-burner keeping it in our thoughts and trusting that when the time is right we would go for it and God will provide, 'cause lets be honest we don't have that kind of money laying around. 

We have also discussed foster care before, but at the time it did not seem to be what we really wanted to do as much as adoption. This was until the South Riding Expo. While working for the Gateway booth Charles spoke to someone who works for a local private foster care agency. They were looking to make a presentation at our church, apparently they need more foster parents for the 7,000 children who are in foster care in Virginia. 

Charles told me this when I stopped by to visit and we had some more questions that he asked and again we did not think this was something we would be able to do. Apparently there can only be two kids to a bedroom and since we already have two (even though neither sleep in their own bed) and my brother has the third room we technically did not have any space to foster. However, we were eligible to do respite care. All you need is a couch for these kids to crash on for any where from one night a month to no more than 29 nights. This is for the kids who are being placed with a family or to provide the foster family a break on weekends or if they are going out of town and the caseworker will not give permission for the child to go also.

So we went to the informational meeting prepared to go through the training to do respite and come to find out that children under 18 months can actually "live" in the parents  bedroom, which allows us the opportunity to foster one child for a while until Maggie gets the heave hoe (are you laughing that this is never going to happen also?) 

So far we are going to finish our last night of training tonight. We still have to have a Safe Crisis Training class and a class that basically goes over medications and how to administer them and what not. Plus we need to do paperwork and a homestudy, which should start in about a week and take about three weeks to complete, fingerprints, CPR classes and all sorts of fun stuff. We are moving along and I would say no later than the end of July we could have a placement. 

According to our trainer most of the children they place are 8 and above. Unless there is and older sibling in school it is hard to detect any abuse. They get all sorts of cases, mom running a prostitution ring, physical abuse, drug abuse and sexual abuse. The goal for 90% of the children coming into care is reunification with their parents. Currently it is more like 50-60% actually are reunited. At age 14 they start preparing the children for independent living by teaching them basic life skills for when they are aged out of foster care. Basically after about age 13 these kids have no change of being adopted.  Virginia gives the parents multiple chances to regain custody of their children so they might enter care at 9 and be 14 by the time their parents rights are terminated and are then probably left in foster care until they reach 18. Right now we are open to male and female through age 12 and female from there up (they also work with teen mothers) 

We are excited to see how this goes. If I did not answer your specific question just let me know!

Please keep us in our prayers as I am sure there are some crazy and exciting and rewarding times ahead!