Foster Care Support Group
Foster care is a system by which a certified, stand-in parent(s) cares for minor children or young peoples who have been removed from their birth parents or other custodial adults by state authority. Responsibility for the young person is assumed by the relevant governmental authority and a placement with another family found.
Yay! Nine months after we turned in our paperwork, the foster care license finally showed up in the mail. The only problem is we asked for boys and girls, 7-18, and got girls only, 5-6. Has anybody been in a situation like this before? How do you go about expanding the parameters of the license without alienating the case workers?
Here are our ideas:
1) Play the confused card and see if the licensor will expand it to boys and girls and up the age limit. If nothing else, hopefully we can either get boys added to the age we were given or, even though it would only be girls, get the age increased to 18.
2) Call the placement coordinator. We have not been impressed with our licensor and would prefer to deal with somebody else anyway.
3) Look for a foster support group in our county or in a neighboring county (where I work anyway) and see if they have any suggestions.
Any other ideas or concerns? We are more concerned with increasing our license than getting rid of the under 7 part of it. The main reason we didn't choose to start at age 5 in the first place was we didn't want to toddler proof our home. If they say our home is good enough, we aren't going to argue with that. And we definitely don't want to wait another 9 months.
Here are our ideas:
1) Play the confused card and see if the licensor will expand it to boys and girls and up the age limit. If nothing else, hopefully we can either get boys added to the age we were given or, even though it would only be girls, get the age increased to 18.
2) Call the placement coordinator. We have not been impressed with our licensor and would prefer to deal with somebody else anyway.
3) Look for a foster support group in our county or in a neighboring county (where I work anyway) and see if they have any suggestions.
Any other ideas or concerns? We are more concerned with increasing our license than getting rid of the under 7 part of it. The main reason we didn't choose to start at age 5 in the first place was we didn't want to toddler proof our home. If they say our home is good enough, we aren't going to argue with that. And we definitely don't want to wait another 9 months.
Since we've already taken care of option #1, though, I think we'll wait until after Labor Day Weekend to call our placement coordinators if we haven't heard from them by then. That way, hopefully we seem like eager foster parents rather than pushy ones.