|
Solaron posted:It's been a while - life, college, job change and the boys took up all of my free time! But I have a new job and it's fully remote, so I can post from the comfort of my home, yay. I am angry on your behalf at the government not giving you more money for taking in a special needs child. This is the loving reason I pay taxes.
|
#
?
Jul 25, 2018 21:42
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 19, 2024 01:17 |
|
|
Thanatosian posted:I am angry on your behalf at the government not giving you more money for taking in a special needs child. I wish more people felt that way, so thank you! I get the impression a lot of the county folks aren't happy either because they are put in the awkward situation of being told to focus on the best interest of the child and also trying to save the state money by giving the family as little as they can. Without being given specific details on how to do that. It's weird.
|
|
#
?
Jul 25, 2018 22:08
|
|
|
I’m a county social worker and my adoption assistance negotiations yielded me a whole extra $50/month for my daughter if that tells you how penny pinching it can be. I honestly recommend a lawyer for negotiations regarding special needs. I also just volunteered to do child care twice a month for the post adoption support group in my county, which will be great practice for me since next year I'm starting my private practice for post adoption family counseling
|
|
#
?
Jul 26, 2018 01:01
|
|
|
Mocking Bird posted:I’m a county social worker and my adoption assistance negotiations yielded me a whole extra $50/month for my daughter if that tells you how penny pinching it can be. I honestly recommend a lawyer for negotiations regarding special needs. Jesus, that is incredibly depressing. This poor kid was removed from a previous foster family for neglect and the amount of care he requires is really, really high (he just qualified for a nurse 56 hours a week because he's considered quadriplegic). I'm going to be very upset if the county tries to make this a big deal. I have contacted an attorney already, just in case.
|
|
#
?
Jul 26, 2018 13:53
|
|
|
After an extended emotional break from the last go-round, we're working on getting back into it. With our own child's wishes in mind as we discussed it with her before we did it again as it heavily emotionally impacted all of us, we're working on adopting a teenager this time. We're sticking around the 12-16 age range as when kids this age tend to still be in the system, the chance for a 'forever home' seems to dissipate so we want to offer love and support to a teen. Since it's been so long we're having to re-do home inspection and the process, but we kept our education credits current so at least we don't have to worry about that and we know what to expect this time. Wife and I once again are excited and it's still just as nerve wracking but given the age range, we randomly had a placement call already when they didn't realize they hadn't done the whole process for approval yet haha. They just saw our names and were like WE SHOULD CALL THEM and we had to remind them we're not quite ready yet! We're pushing more for adoption only instead of just fostering this time, which with this age group is somewhat more common, so i'm excited!
|
|
#
?
Oct 1, 2018 18:48
|
|
|
As the adoptive mom of a 19 year old who moved in just after she turned 16, it was awesome and continues to be and I also got my rear end utterly handed to me  I loved her independence and how much I could trust her with. I didn’t love the number of years of trauma I was working against to gain her trust and make her feel loved and heard. Now that we’re fostering again I feel like we’re having to rehash it all again, and it breaks my heart to hear her say things about how she wishes she could have come to my house when she was ten and the envy she has for the little guys who are incoming  I forget how old your child is, but making sure they know how to self protect (no secrets, always come to mom and dad if you feel weird, what to do in emergencies) is super important because little kids love to seem cool to big kids! And big kids in foster care aren’t immune to the pull of teenage antics, and can be more likely to be drawn to some of the darker roads. For example, my kid is a huge lovable nerd but she’s still the worlds worst babysitter because her role modeling for how you treat children was all warped. I also highly recommend the book The Connected Child. It really spoke to me about how it felt to parent my daughter after all she went through.
|
|
#
?
Oct 1, 2018 19:14
|
|
|
Mocking Bird posted:As the adoptive mom of a 19 year old who moved in just after she turned 16, it was awesome and continues to be and I also got my rear end utterly handed to me We actually have The Connected Child! My mother who's a therapist (god help me growing up hah) gave it to me the first go-round and yeah my daughter is old enough now that we've had a personal boundary discussion, self-safety, privacy, etc. and she knows that she can tell us anything and frequently does regardless what it's about which for school purposes has been very eye opening how much little boys are assholes at her age. She's comfortable with being very open an honest with my wife and I so thankfully it's not an issue which I really hope continues as she becomes a teenager herself in a couple years. With that in mind, we're limiting the adoption to female only like we did last time to prevent some issues and we've installed locks on my daughters door for peace of mind on her part. I know this is going to present a whole new world of challenges, but we love kids regardless and even after the fact we'll probably always want 1-2 children in the house to raise even after our daughter moves out. If I had my choice we'd just fill the house with kids and save the world as mentioned before, thankfully my wife has the sense to NOT let me do that and limit it to what we can realistically handle haha.
|
|
#
?
Oct 1, 2018 19:22
|
|
|
We just did the first meeting with our third agency today. I’ll admit to feeling a bit defeated, we’ve switched twice because first our county is so far behind on approvals they couldn’t guarantee licensure within a year, and then the adoption focused agency we were working with told us the earliest we’d be approved is next summer. I’m a therapist and social worker for foster kids, my fiancé is a stay at home dad, I’ve already adopted one child out of foster care. You’d think it would be a smoother ride for us The new agency seems good but man are they particular. I’m going to have to buy a different fire extinguisher (different rating but equally powerful?) and put together a new and hilariously specific emergency/disaster kit. Also means having to beg my upstairs neighbors to finish their gardening/landscaping since there are shallow trenches dug everywhere....
|
|
#
?
Oct 2, 2018 05:19
|
|
|
Mocking Bird posted:We just did the first meeting with our third agency today. I’ll admit to feeling a bit defeated, we’ve switched twice because first our county is so far behind on approvals they couldn’t guarantee licensure within a year, and then the adoption focused agency we were working with told us the earliest we’d be approved is next summer. Sounds about right. We ended up having to buy lock boxes this go-round with the agency for medications as even though they're in our private bathroom, you never know apparently. Our basic fire extinguisher seemed to pass just fine thankfully. That's messed up that with your experience they couldn't get approvals done quickly. Being our second time we're looking at like 3 months total from when we started up again with the paperwork and background checks and all the stuff that goes with it. We should be set for placement by the end of this month if the timeline holds up. This agency we went with this time has 2 home inspections which is strange to us. The worker we're assigned this go-round does the initial and then her supervisor does a follow-up before they certify. We would have gone with the previous one we were with, but all the people we knew that worked there quit and told us some horror stories that made us change our minds pretty quickly. They've had some MAJOR scandals with abuse in the system in the news lately and there are a few pending lawsuits for abuse in DHS funded homes and daycare's right now, so I assume they're just being extra cautious which I can appreciate. I hope they get it straightened out for you though, that's garbage to have to wait a year for something you've already done. That should be fast-tracked.
|
|
#
?
Oct 2, 2018 14:23
|
|
|
We just got signed up for our pre-service classes at the end of the month  Things are looking up!I also spent $200 on their hilariously specific emergency preparedness requirements and now amazon thinks I’m a doomsday prepper. Freeze dried food and water purification tablets as far as the eye can see!
|
|
#
?
Oct 3, 2018 02:10
|
|
|
Round 1 home inspection done, lady was here for 3 hours and their interview process was FAR more in-depth than when we did the fostering one. Adoption they asked a ton more about our history from childhood to current and went into far more detail. Part two is Friday so we should have some idea where we are then. They've already begun processing our paperwork since we were already cleared on training and such from the previous placement, so at least that saved us several months worth of workup to get back into this. Very different set of rules and expectations for teens vs. small children as well, which was interesting. Same general expectations for wellbeing, but the specifics on care, privacy, and a few other points were different including the conversations we'll need to be prepared to have. I'll be very curious to see how this goes. We actually have some control on this for placement as it's for someone with rights already terminated versus just random foster placement.
|
|
#
?
Oct 10, 2018 23:40
|
|
|
I always recommend having your list of concrete dealbreakers absolutely pounded out, and when they call you with a placement asking them those questions point blank. It always sucks with something gets overlooked so you wanna be concrete and encourage transparency! You're doing a good thing, teens in care need parents so much, even after 18. For instance, ask me about my daughter blowing $800 in scholarship money in a week 
|
|
#
?
Oct 11, 2018 00:11
|
|
|
Mocking Bird posted:I always recommend having your list of concrete dealbreakers absolutely pounded out, and when they call you with a placement asking them those questions point blank. It always sucks with something gets overlooked so you wanna be concrete and encourage transparency! How did she blow it?! Yeah we have the same list of rules that we used on the last placement and we'll just modify it a bit for the teenager. Going to be a very different experience certainly, but my wife and I are super excited either way.
|
|
#
?
Oct 11, 2018 13:20
|
|
|
Home inspection part 2 complete! Now on to part 3! Part 2 was questions that needed clarification from our previous approval-go-round from last year which was painless. Part 3 will be tomorrow (24 hours later!) which will be reviewing the final report. From what we were told given the age range we specified, we will probably start getting calls within 2 weeks which is crazy. Definitely excited, but this felt much faster and simplified compared to last time.
|
|
#
?
Oct 13, 2018 01:49
|
|
|
I'm excited for you! We have our first foster class tomorrow (my third time around but my fiancé's first, I'm going to be bored to tears) My kid won't tell me what she spent the money on, bless her idiot heart. I also got her new post-adoption birth certificate today and somehow she didn't understand that I would be listen as "mother" and her bio mom would be completely removed, so it sort of killed my excitement to have to help her process that I didn't realize she didn't understand what the new certificate would look like since the social worker explained it to both of us together. Sigh.
|
|
#
?
Oct 13, 2018 02:06
|
|
|
Bitcoins, Fortnite Loot boxes, or Kickstarter pledges. If it was anything that could be easily returned/refunded she probably would have told you pretty quickly. My guess is that it isn't something terrible per se, but rather a regrettable purchase(s) that she might be too embarassed to admit to.
|
|
#
?
Oct 13, 2018 07:00
|
|
|
My fiancé and I have our bets on a tattoo/giving money to her bio family/weed (plus Victoria's Secret and Uber eats, which are her usual ways to blow astonishing amounts of money). She claims it was to buy plane tickets to visit family for spring break but those are hard to book using cash ATM withdrawals in my experience I will probably never know and it was her money to spend or gently caress with, so all I can do is tell her I'm disappointed she lied to me initially and also that she has nothing to show for the effort she put into those scholarships Teenagers are so fun
|
|
#
?
Oct 13, 2018 07:25
|
|
|
They told us it could be up to 1-2 weeks for approval as they officially submitted our paperwork for review... queue 3pm and we got a call saying it was approved! That was unexpectedly fast. They're sending our criteria out to all the case managers in the state for review and a match, was told given the age group we might get a call this week which is absolutely bonkers. Way ahead of what we were expecting, but since we've been successful previously, they said they didn't have any need to dig really deep in the review and given the need for families, it was expedited. I can definitely imagine a teen blowing money on that crap. I really really hate Fortnite. I'm so glad it's an unknown in my house. My daughter has seen it on YouTube and thinks it's stupid thankfully. I'll never tell her any differently. We had a brief discussion on allowance for said potential teen, but as we've never done allowance for my daughter before we're at a crossroads on how to approach it and tabled it for now. Curious to see what kind of wardrobe they bring with them and what they own, so we're setting finances aside to go clothes/product shopping in preparation for that. Thank god for discounts at Target and Thrift shopping!  How many training hours are you required to do for yours? Just curious.
|
|
#
?
Oct 15, 2018 22:57
|
|
|
21 hours, plus 8 extra hours to be a therapeutic home, and then 16 hours per year to maintain it. My kid came clean about her spending spree and told me it was spent on three piercings (ear and belly button), food, beats headphones, Apple Music, and clothes. She was ashamed because it felt like a dumb way to spend that much money. You don't say, child, you don't say. Mocking Bird fucked around with this message at 01:54 on Oct 16, 2018 |
|
#
?
Oct 16, 2018 00:57
|
|
|
Mocking Bird posted:21 hours, plus 8 extra hours to be a therapeutic home, and then 16 hours per year to maintain it. Spending crazy amounts of money on body modification art you say? 
|
|
#
?
Oct 16, 2018 02:52
|
|
|
Spikes32 posted:Spending crazy amounts of money on body modification art you say? Nothing sucks more than being an adult hypocrite, makes it hard to school your children My tattoos are at least good 
|
|
#
?
Oct 16, 2018 03:19
|
|
|
Mocking Bird posted:Nothing sucks more than being an adult hypocrite, makes it hard to school your children Like telling my daughter that drugs are bad and tattoos are for life with her knowing that you do both (not the illegal kind). "Honey, this is what daddy calls 'a mistake'." Had final signatures last night, supervisor redid the final audit just now. We're officially in the rotation and set to 'open'. Supposed to get assigned a different case worker (adoption side is separate from foster side apparently) so this will be the third person we'll be working with. Went ahead and made inquiries on the children on the adoption website that we've looked at numerous times to see if they're available to meet, talk about, etc. and contact their case worker ahead of time just to get the cogs moving. Our processor actually asked us several questions about what we enjoyed about fostering, volunteering for stuff (I did every chance I could), and she even asked about my speaking at some of the events about being a foster parent and why we do what we do which I thought was neat. Done that before so I'm all for doing it again. What kind of surprised me is that having support groups for parents is something new for them that they're trying to put together for adoption families that foster agencies already do. Seems like they're a bit behind the times in that regard, but I'm very glad that they wanted to get feedback on what they should focus on for it, so we gave them a rather extensive list of what benefited us last time and what we'd love to see going forward. And now we wait... for a teenager...
|
|
#
?
Oct 24, 2018 22:54
|
|
|
You're gonna do great 
|
|
#
?
Oct 25, 2018 00:36
|
|
|
We are now finished with training and background checks and moving on to our adoption home study! We are also signing a lease for a bigger house today, so my adult daughter can still have a bedroom at home and not feel pushed out.
|
|
#
?
Oct 31, 2018 17:10
|
|
|
Mocking Bird posted:We are now finished with training and background checks and moving on to our adoption home study! We are also signing a lease for a bigger house today, so my adult daughter can still have a bedroom at home and not feel pushed out. Wow very cool! Sounds like training and background checks went faster for you this time than expected. We're still waiting on our assigned worker which we're supposed to hear by Friday. They encouraged us to browse the, for lack of a better term, "kid catalog" to see if we see any good matches that we'd be interested in starting the process with. Every time I think about the way this whole broken system works it honestly feels like the most guilty build-a-bear/kid setup ever. I am proud that our states 'kids in the system' is starting to decline until I see news stories of foster and adoptive children being pulled out of meth houses. Ugh. As thorough as the state was with us, how do they miss stuff? (Budget/staffing/I know but C'MON the signs should be obvious).
|
|
#
?
Nov 1, 2018 14:51
|
|
|
The kid catalog makes me sad too We actually got to look a bit while we were participating in training to get a sense of what the profiles look like, and we saw an eight year old that honestly looked perfect for us, but we aren't approved yet so I hope for his sake he's not still in the book when we're ready. I'm still trying to convince my partner we can handle siblings, they talked about how one family last year took a set of EIGHT siblings and he leaned over and whispered "that would be you if I let you" and he isn't wrong
|
|
#
?
Nov 2, 2018 07:37
|
|
|
Mocking Bird posted:The kid catalog makes me sad too LOL sounds like me! If my wife didn't keep me in the real world I'd adopt the max amount and just save the world. We've had several we looked at while we were waiting that we wanted to at least meet and they've all found homes since then which I'm super excited they have placements and potential homes but bummed that ones we thought might be a good match are no longer available. As long as these kids are getting placed in the end I'm happy.
|
|
#
?
Nov 2, 2018 14:30
|
|
|
Hey y’all. Any of you have experience with CASA?
|
|
#
?
Nov 5, 2018 17:20
|
|
|
Sure do, what's your question? The basics are that they are there to get to know kids, spend time with them, and advocate for their best interest to the court. It's a check-and-balance to the power of the social worker's recommendation, which is often based on the whole family rather than a specific child. CASAs often spend more time with individual children than county social workers too - in NorCal it's an hour a week or 4 hours a month. I found my daughters CASA to be amazing, as a first time parent it was really nice to have a "grandma" to call and brainstorm with who was familiar with foster care. She came to our adoption and will be invited to the college graduation 
|
|
#
?
Nov 5, 2018 19:24
|
|
|
N. Senada posted:Hey y’all. Any of you have experience with CASA? My wife volunteers for them, but looks like Mocking Bird about covered it. I also know their IT director not that he's involved with the kids, but, at least I can harass him if I can't get a hold of someone haha.
|
|
#
?
Nov 5, 2018 19:29
|
|
|
Realistically, how many hours per week are needed to be a CASA volunteer? It sounds like something I’d enjoy and I know SF has a need for more, but it’s not something I would want to half rear end.
|
|
#
?
Nov 12, 2018 21:52
|
|
|
MAKE NO BABBYS posted:Realistically, how many hours per week are needed to be a CASA volunteer? It sounds like something I’d enjoy and I know SF has a need for more, but it’s not something I would want to half rear end. Depends on the case really. My wife has gone to court with the kids as a representative of the child when there's a "We blame the worker/we blame the parent/we need a third party opinion" dispute in safety/reunification/placement as a third party opinion. In general I think she might do about 4-8 hours a month max, and that's if she's called upon to do so. We've gone a couple months without anything before and had back to back situations too. They give you the case basics, you meet the child and get to know them and their situation a bit. They usually combined my wife's time with the parent visit and watch the interactions, language, behavior changes, etc. The age of the child also plays a large portion as to what you can infer and read into emotion and everything else so it seems like you're trying to make an honest judgement call on what is probably not enough information. She's only done it for about 8 months now, so I can't even fathom a statistic as to which way it usually goes. It generally leaves her emotionally drained a bit so I tend not to ask too many questions. You definitely do not want to half-rear end it. If you're going to volunteer, you need to commit yourself to the child and their best interest and really try to understand the situation as a whole and really analyze what's best for the child to represent them. Her coming from a nursing background definitely helps. I couldn't do it. I just want to foster/adopt all the children. Edit: They*almost* convinced us to take a sibling set, but wife reminded me we reaaaaally don't have room to do so. Dangit. She's right though.
|
|
#
?
Nov 12, 2018 22:06
|
|
|
I work with CASA volunteers a lot, and I think average is about 6 hours a month. Weekly contacts with the child are ideal but I think a few hours every other week is more likely, especially since a lot of SF kids are placed further away. The idea is not a ton of hours committed per month, but the consistency over time - foster homes and social workers may change, but you won't! The CASAs with slightly higher time commitments tend to be the educational rights holders/advocates as well so they attend school meetings. In other news, my boss is seriously considering sending an amazing 14 year old girl from work home with me, which would be wonderful so cross your fingers. She's been switching foster homes a lot through no fault of her own and it's making both me and my boss frustrated and sad and so when I threw out there that I really like her and would foster her in a heart beat my boss really latched onto it. I hope it happens!
|
|
#
?
Nov 13, 2018 06:07
|
|
|
Mocking Bird posted:In other news, my boss is seriously considering sending an amazing 14 year old girl from work home with me, which would be wonderful so cross your fingers. She's been switching foster homes a lot through no fault of her own and it's making both me and my boss frustrated and sad and so when I threw out there that I really like her and would foster her in a heart beat my boss really latched onto it. I hope it happens! Oh that's awesome! Good luck! That's the exact age we're kind of hoping for. We okay'd them doing out of state adoptions as well to broaden the availability since states around us have a much higher population of children in our age range. We missed the October adoption party and there isn't another one until February which isn't exactly close to us but damnit we're going to go. Our worker goes to committee today with our stuff and shares it with all the state workers again for review to see if we have any matches beyond the teens we pre-specified as interested matches. This really is the weirdest system compared to straight fostering.
|
|
#
?
Nov 13, 2018 15:34
|
|
|
Awesome! Thanks for the info. I think ~10 hours a month would be manageable without spreading me too thin, I was thinking it was more like 10 weekly which would probably cause me to burn out. The CASA office is right across the street from my restaurant/office so I’ll pop by and talk to them.
|
|
#
?
Nov 13, 2018 20:10
|
|
|
Mocking Bird posted:I work with CASA volunteers a lot, and I think average is about 6 hours a month. Weekly contacts with the child are ideal but I think a few hours every other week is more likely, especially since a lot of SF kids are placed further away. The idea is not a ton of hours committed per month, but the consistency over time - foster homes and social workers may change, but you won't! Is your daughter excited about maybe getting a sister?
|
|
#
?
Nov 16, 2018 02:41
|
|
|
My daughter is actually sort of a frosty mean girl even on a good day. I did respite care twice in three years for a total of three weeks and she was shockingly icy and unkind to those girls (12 once, 13 another time) and I didn't pursue fostering again until she was established out of the house at college because no other child deserves to share a room with her. She's vastly improved in the last year or two. She feels pretty threatened by us having more children, and the closer to her age the more threatened she is. She feels very judged by her peers, so she wants a "little" brother or sister. 14 is sort of the ambiguous gray area - could be little, could be a peer. I wouldn't bring home any 14 year old, only one that was emotionally younger than my daughter. She actually wrote a generic "welcome to the family" letter for the adoption agency and that was very funny and heart warming, but clearly aimed at a child under 12. She is also less threatened by kids of different ethnicities than her, which this child is  Our ideal age is around 8 years old, but I feel so strongly about teens in foster care that I know I'm going to end up fostering that age again. Plus, kittens grow into cats.
|
|
#
?
Nov 16, 2018 03:56
|
|
|
Alright, I have to imagine that somewhere in this thread there's the information I'm looking for, but there's a lot here. My wife and I just had our first bio-baby 6 months ago. Our long-term plan has always been to have one biologically and then adopt the rest. While fostering is incredible and I applaud the ever-loving hell out of people who do it, it's not our preferred pathway for a number of reasons. Primarily, I'm a social worker and I've spent a ton of time in the foster care trenches and it's just not somewhere I want to go in my personal life. It's very likely that fostering may be something we pick up later in life, but not just yet. Having said all of that, we essentially have one major concern when it comes to adopting: A good process. We don't care if we adopt domestically, or internationally (we're US based). Though we are looking to adopt younger than 2 years of age. We're also not terribly concerned about expenses because my wife works for an amazing company that subsidizes their employee adoption initiatives pretty heavily. So, given that, is there a good jumping off point for us? From what we understand, each pathway has its own challenges but I'm curious as to what y'alls experiences have been like. My gut tells me that internationally may prove to be somewhat more fluid as there can only be so much in-home invasiveness, which is something we're both pretty concerned about. Anyway, thank you all for doing what you do! Having been in the field I can tell you firsthand, the work that good foster parents do is utterly remarkable.
|
|
#
?
Nov 25, 2018 07:26
|
|
|
I'm not super versed in private adoptions, but from the contact I've had with people who've gone through it, finding the right agency for you is absolutely key. Meet with multiple agencies and really grill the poo poo out of them, get your questions answered, and see who is the most straight forward with you. Any home study is going to be invasive, international or domestic. Talk with the agencies about your concerns.
|
|
#
?
Nov 25, 2018 07:42
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 19, 2024 01:17 |
|
|
Definitely do your homework and find a good agency for you. Especially if you're looking at international adoption since there are definitely really shady agencies that operate outside. As in the kids they put up for adoption and say are orphans may not actually be orphans. There are a lot of religious/religiously oriented or affiliated private agencies as well so be aware that they might have different or more subjective licensing/home study requirements. Depending on your state there may be more involvement than you'd expect - after a really awful child fatality involving an international adoptee, my state now has stricter home study and home visit requirements for private adoption but that may not be the case for you (and tbh the new rules are more of a PR thing in my opinion).
|
|
#
?
Nov 29, 2018 06:51
|
|
