A huge WWYD... (re: related child in foster care)

[Tap]

Could he be in a kinship placement with maternal family members? The fact that they didn't contact you to take him might mean he's with a family member. Usually, they check with possible family members before they place a child with non-related foster parents. If that is the case, I'd leave well enough alone.

Usually, but Not necessarily.  We had 2 kids in our family go to foster care, on two different occasions without anyone in the family knowing   It was a brother and sister (the girl is dd10's bio mom).  We didn't find out until after they were reunited.

 

Then dd10's brother was in foster care and my mom (his great-grand mother) had to go to the state (they didn't contact her) to get him placed with her instead of foster care.  I don't know how long he was in foster care, but it was over a month. 

 

The state was given my contact information so they could contact me for dd's placement.  I live 30-45 minutes away from the county where she was removed from care.  But since I live in a different state, it took me several months to get her moved to our care.  We had to do interstate compact to get her.  There was a family in our class that had been trying to get their grand kids out of foster care for a couple of years.  They were willing to adopt the children and the state was still trying to keep the children in foster care.  They didn't need a foster license to get the kids (kinship care) but were getting a license to remove any hurdles they could.

Edited September 14, 2017 by Tap

[Ausmumof3]

Based on my experience, I would run away. Unless you were already wanting to adopt and wanted a potentially special needs kid...run.

 

But...our situation is on the extreme end of what happens when the family foster/adopt situation goes bad. DD10 is my great-niece who came to us through the foster system at 5mo. It was only supposed to be for a couple of months. The bio-mom was in legal trouble and going to do a short stent in jail. She never abused her kids so she had no reason to not get them back. Once she was kid free.....she went down hill and the curtain was drawn back on more of her crazy life choices.

 

The chaos of raising dd10 has wrecked my bio-families and bio-children's lives. I would never wish the past 10 years of my life on anyone. Do not go into this thinking it will be temporary. Only do this if you want to raise another child and have 2 extra parents involved.

 

Even my daughter's case worker said my extended family is like a bad soap opera. Considering what caseworkers see in their career that is pretty bad. LOL

:grouphug:

 

So wrong that doing the right thing is so hurtful to your kids

[Pen]

I'd want to know the reality of their foster home before thinking about it further. Not all foster care is hunky dory.

 

I agree with this. More information is needed. And it may be hard to get.  And hard to discern whether it is a good situation for him or not.

 

 

Based on my experience, I would run away. Unless you were already wanting to adopt and wanted a  potentially special needs kid...run. 

 

But...our situation is on the extreme end of what happens when the family foster/adopt situation goes bad. DD10 is my great-niece who came to us through the foster system at 5mo. It was only supposed to be for a couple of months. The bio-mom was in legal trouble and going to do a short stent in jail. She never abused her kids so she had no reason to not get them back. Once she was kid free.....she went down hill and the curtain was drawn back on more of her crazy life choices.

 

The chaos of raising dd10 has wrecked my bio-families and bio-children's lives.  I would never wish the past 10 years of my life on anyone.  Do not go into this thinking it will be temporary.  Only do this if you want to raise another child and have 2 extra parents involved.  

 

Even my daughter's case worker said my extended family is like a bad soap opera.  Considering what caseworkers see in their career that is pretty bad. LOL  

 

It sounds like you have an unusually bad situation though. A friend of mine learned as an adult that his brother was biologically his cousin, and apparently there had never been any trouble. They were both sons of their parents. It would not necessarily be a bad situation. And the child may not have special needs issues to make it more difficult. My guess is that we usually learn more about the difficult family adoption situations (because something is going wrong and someone is complaining about the issues involved, or seeking help with problems) and rarely hear anything about the ones that are smooth--or at least as easy as raising any child..

 

The child may have some special needs just because of family chaos, but that may settle out easily if he is in a stable home environment. In this situation, there is likely info on whether he is likely to be special needs from the stepson and / or op's dh.

 

 

Chances are, that foster family he is with now will want to adopt him and he will be loved and have a real mom and dad. At 2 yrs old, people will want to adopt him. You take him as kinship care, he is far more likely to turn 18 yrs old with no real mom or dad.

 

 

I don't agree with this as anything more than conjecture.. What are you basing this on?  

[Tap]

 

It sounds like you have an unusually bad situation though. A friend of mine learned as an adult that his brother was biologically his cousin, and apparently there had never been any trouble. They were both sons of their parents. It would not necessarily be a bad situation. And the child may not have special needs issues to make it more difficult. My guess is that we usually learn more about the difficult family adoption situations (because something is going wrong and someone is complaining about the issues involved, or seeking help with problems) and rarely hear anything about the ones that are smooth--or at least as easy as raising any child..

 

The child may have some special needs just because of family chaos, but that may settle out easily if he is in a stable home environment. In this situation, there is likely info on whether he is likely to be special needs from the stepson and / or op's dh.

 

 

Your right. And I wasn't hiding the fact that our case is complicated.  But bad things do happen and foster care guardianships/adoptions are not always easy.  A lot of people want to paint a rosey picture and talk about best case scenarios.  I am just saying that it doesn't always end up that way and to not go into it thinking it will be easy.  The courts say it is temporary...but the vast majority of foster cases start out as temporary....they just don't always end up that way.  We had Zero intention of adopting.  Has they came to us in the beginning and said, her is a 5mo baby, will you adopt her. We never would have gotten started on this journey.  They asked us to do this for a few months, I figured it would be a  year or two.  Nope, I was wrong.   The parents didn't neglect this child.  They just had to jump through some legal hoops and weren't willing to do so, we ended up with her.   And then didn't feel right about turning her over to another foster home after having her for 18 months.  That is why I kind of joke sometimes and say "we accidentally adopted"

 

 At one of dd10's and her brother's  court hearing there were:  (closed hearing -no visitors). 

bio-dad 1

his attorney

 

bio-dad 2

his attorney

 

bio-mom

her attorney

 

myself

dh

the state's attorney

 

 

Oregon caseworker for dd10

Oregon caseworker for brother 

Washington caseworker on phone (for us)

 

CASA for dd10

CASA for her brother

 

Judge and legal court officers.

 

There were almost 20 people trying to come to agreements on the care for 2 children.  This is just to show how many people are involved in the decisions governing 2 little lives. It was this way, every 3 months for 2 years.  Sometimes the kids hearings were together and sometimes separate.   But it can be very, very hard to navigate when you have so many people steering the ship. 

 

 

If you want to read more about families who have suffered due to adoption, research RAD on the board (Denise mom of 5 and I think Tara the Liberator are both families who have had trials with RAD kids)

[Katy]

Here is Louisiana's laws regarding termination of parental rights:  https://stellent.dcfs.la.gov/LADSS/getContent?id=112148&rendition=Web&mimeType=application/pdf&noSaveAs=true

 

It appears to me that:

• LA makes no distinction for the age of the child. Infants are not treated dramatically different than older children.
• If a child has been in their home for 17 of the last 22 months, foster parents are given the opportunity to hire their own lawyer and make a case for permanent custody. 
• If a foster parent is a relative, the state may decide NOT to terminate parental rights, basically leaving the child parentless from a legal perspective as one of the posters cautioned above.
• If the mother has previously had her parental rights terminated, LA is more likely than other states to make the goal faster TPR.  IE:  Once you've proved to be an unfit parent, they'll give you less time to hurt subsequent children before terminating rights.  The state I'm in treats each child like its own case.

 

If I understand this page correctly, in Louisiana grandparents and step-grandparents can get the children without being licensed foster parents, but paternity does need to be legally established:  http://icpcstatepages.org/louisiana/tpr/

 

 

[Pen]

Your right. And I wasn't hiding the fact that our case is complicated.  But bad things do happen and foster care guardianships/adoptions are not always easy.  A lot of people want to paint a rosey picture and talk about best case scenarios.  I am just saying that it doesn't always end up that way and to not go into it thinking it will be easy.

 

I totally agree with this.  One just does not know how it will be.

 

The courts say it is temporary...but the vast majority of foster cases start out as temporary....they just don't always end up that way.  We had Zero intention of adopting.  Has they came to us in the beginning and said, her is a 5mo baby, will you adopt her. We never would have gotten started on this journey.  They asked us to do this for a few months, I figured it would be a  year or two.  Nope, I was wrong.   The parents didn't neglect this child.  They just had to jump through some legal hoops and weren't willing to do so, we ended up with her.   And then didn't feel right about turning her over to another foster home after having her for 18 months.  That is why I kind of joke sometimes and say "we accidentally adopted"

 

And I also agree that it makes little to no sense for OP to take the child into her care now, unless either or both of the following: she and her husband would like to be permanent parents of the child or the child's current situation seems not to be good for the child.

 

 At one of dd10's and her brother's  court hearing there were:  (closed hearing -no visitors). 

bio-dad 1

his attorney

 

bio-dad 2

his attorney

 

bio-mom

her attorney

 

myself

dh

the state's attorney

 

 

Oregon caseworker for dd10

Oregon caseworker for brother 

Washington caseworker on phone (for us)

 

CASA for dd10

CASA for her brother

 

Judge and legal court officers.

 

There were almost 20 people trying to come to agreements on the care for 2 children.  This is just to show how many people are involved in the decisions governing 2 little lives. It was this way, every 3 months for 2 years.  Sometimes the kids hearings were together and sometimes separate.   But it can be very, very hard to navigate when you have so many people steering the ship. 

 

 

If you want to read more about families who have suffered due to adoption, research RAD on the board (Denise mom of 5 and I think Tara the Liberator are both families who have had trials with RAD kids)

 

 

I also had a many persons dealing with my son during the time I was his fostermom, and during the adoption process, but our situation was different in many ways too.

 

First, I did take on ds being ready for it to be "forever." That being the case, I pushed to get attachment therapy as soon as he arrived into my care. I had also already been involved with a RAD and Adoption Disruption online group prior to his arrival, and had been involved some in the fosterparent world, so had some idea of various problems like yours that might ensue, and did my best to be proactive against those happening. In case anyone is wondering about this, my information and guidance was that it was important for ds to make an attachment asap, even if he ended up with someone else or back with bioparent ultimately...that the "window" for attachment was closing and if it did not happen soon it might not be able to happen with anyone in his life.

 

I did not have any bio-children.

 

DS's case involved multiple adoption workers in 2 states also. (though not a sibling nor 2nd bio-dad)

 

It was a situation that went on over 7 years, and there were around 5 foster families in 5 years before he came to me. There were a number of social workers in both states (6 in Oregon, my state, who I dealt with. 1 or 2 who I did not deal with who had taken him into foster care at one point when police had been called about the bad situation he was then in. And maybe the same again or more in the other state). I am not sure I could even get an accurate count now. There was more than one judge during the course of events. There were a number of lawyers.

 

 

There were also, in DS's case, extra people involved because he might or might not have been covered by laws regarding Tribes and adoption of children with Native American / Indian ancestry. 

 

 

I did not go to the numerous court hearings about parental rights termination and so on. I did not even go to the various adoption hearings or finalization of  adoption hearing. I was represented by an attorney, as was ds represented there by another attorney.

 

There was certainly still a lot of paper work. A lot of phone calls. A lot of doing.

 

But the every 3 months hearings stuff? Yeah, it happened. I stayed out of it.

 

And there are still some challenges that seem to be directly related to ds's early life experiences.  But over all, I would say it has been a very positive experience.

Edited September 15, 2017 by Pen

[Katy]

Bumping because the sticky pregnancy thread made me wonder if you could/would share an update?

[Sdel]

When we had my grandson placed with us the social worker made it very clear they had no intentions of returning him to his parents. They also strongly suggested we involve an attorney and seek custody separately from them. If you want to persue this it might be beneficial to speak to a family attorney familiar with the foster system.

 

Stefanie