Foster To Adopt?

[Ryan&Amber2013]

Have any of you fostered to adopt, or do you have any friends who have done this? We are looking into it, for 2019.

We would want to bring a newborn into the home. Is it easy to receive a newborn? I imagine there is more of a demand for older children, but we wouldn't bring any in who are older than our biological children. Thanks!

 

[KMK]

Beware! My wife and I foster/adopted 4 children through the county for 10 years. Having county social workers in your home (which will be required often) will put your own biological children at risk, especially seeing as you are Christians. These SWs are, by and large, inexperience, under trained, and over worked. On top of that, if they have any education at all, it is in the most liberal of all departments of the most liberal of all institutions. (Sociology at a liberal University.) Many of them look at home school as a form of abuse and neglect. If they find out that you use any corporal punishment at all, it will color their opinion of everything else you do.

If you didn't already have kids it would be one thing, but 'count the cost' of yoking your own children together with County level bureaucrats.

 

[David Lamb]

Have any of you fostered to adopt, or do you have any friends who have done this? We are looking into it, for 2019.

We would want to bring a newborn into the home. Is it easy to receive a newborn? I imagine there is more of a demand for older children, but we wouldn't bring any in who are older than our biological children. Thanks!

This probably varies depending on what country you live in. Here in the UK, for many years now there have been very few adoptions of newborn babies. Most adoptions here tend to be of older children, especially those with additional special needs, whether emotional, sensory or physical. So here, at any rate, adopting a baby is not easy, from the point of view of there being few babies placed for adoption. To quote a UK adoption website: "Today, very few babies are 'given up' for adoption in the UK. Instead, each year in England alone, there are around 4,000 children waiting in foster care, unable to live with their birth families. The majority are older children, sibling groups who need to be placed together or children with disabilities. These children come from a wide range of ethnic and cultural backgrounds."

 

[Edward]

First, most of the children in the system are going to have issues. If you want a baby from the state, at best you may end up with a crack baby. As they get older, the issues are going to be there, but almost by definition if they are in the system, it means they have issues that you and your family are going to have to deal with.

Second, as Ken noted above, you are inviting the government in to investigate every detail of your household for the next 20 years. Give up any idea of any but the mildest form of discipline for children that may have the highest level of social issues. No spanking/swatting perhaps not even "go to your room".

Remember, you are going to be dealing with children where no relative or friend is willing or able to take them.

I worked with a woman who fostered/adopted a mixed race sibling group. But her children were grown and out of the house, she had a mixed race marriage that matched the children, and she was well aware of the issues that those children had. It worked out for her, but she had worked with CASA for years so she and her husband went into the process with their eyes open, and they already had a very good relationship with the state workers from her time with CASA.