Waiting

We are officially open for a new placement, and are waiting for the right fit to come along.

What does that mean?

I’ve said in a previous post that we are looking for a girl ages 4-7. A girl in that age range with medical problems (husband = nurse) would be our ideal situation. Do I think that child is actually going to drop into our laps? No, no I do not.

How does this process of getting a child placed with you work, you might ask? For starters, it varies from agency to agency.

Private versus County:

We are with a county rather than a private agency which means we are likely to get more calls. It’s expensive to place kids with private agencies and that typically (around here anyway) only happens when a child can’t be placed in a regular county certified foster home for some reason. They could have severe behavioral issues that require a therapeutic level foster home (a therapeutic foster home is one with extensive training in handling behavioral issues) and the county’s therapeutic homes might be full. It sometimes means a child comes with a set of siblings the county wants to keep together and no county foster homes are available who can take them all. A child could have really severe developmental delays and need specialized care that isn’t available in a county foster home. Etc. There are lots of reasons kids might be hard to place in a county home and end up with a private agency.

Seth and I have contemplated switching to a particular private agency any number of times. There’s a local agency we really, really like and respect. Private agencies typically come with extra supports and more money for the daily stipend. But being with a private agency means a couple of things that we don’t like: 1) likely only getting kids with significant behavioral issues, and 2) longer waits for placements. So the upshot is we have stayed with the county for almost 6 years now.

County calls:

When we have an open bed and are looking for a new placement we call the amazing woman who does placements for our county. We love her. She’s good at her job, works insanely hard for the kids, tries hard to come up with good matches between kids and foster parents, and takes “no” graciously. The latter is important because there are a lot of “nos” before we say yes.

I’m not sure all foster parents are as picky as we are but we want kids who will be a good match for us. We do not ever want situations where we need to disrupt a placement because we don’t match well with the child. We had that happen on our very first placement; Kiddo was placed with us with her older brother and we could not keep him safe and he had to be removed from our home after just 18 days with us. It was traumatic for absolutely everyone involved and we want to avoid that happening.

So when the placement woman calls with a 13 year old with developmental delays and a newborn baby? We say no because we don’t have that much bandwidth. Not with two other high needs kids in our lives and both of us working full time.

And when she calls with a little boy with a broken arm and other signs of abuse? We say no because we really need a girl because of a potential shared bedroom situation. Right now Kiddo is in with Tiny but that may need to be swapped when we get a new kid. I want to be sure we can meet Kiddo’s needs for privacy as she gets older and hits puberty and that may mean getting her old room back and not sharing.

And when the county calls us with a 14 year old who was already adopted and removed from her adoptive home because of sexual abuse? I cry for the kid. Legit I burst into tears for her situation. And still said no because we need a child young enough to go to daycare still.

And when the county called with a newborn straight from the hospital? My heart strings twanged so hard it hurt. But I said no because I don’t want to be divorced. My husband is the one who always, always, always gets up with crying infants at night. I sleep right through it. And he has said no infants because of his crazy early mornings as a nurse at a hospital. So I respected his decision (plus our couch is wicked uncomfortable to sleep on and I’d have been exiled to it 😂).

So we have had lots of calls – those are not all of them. But it gives you an idea of what kinds of calls we have been getting and why we have said no to those calls so far. Would we take a 2 year old rather than a 4 year old? Quite likely. Would we take a 9 year old? Quite likely not. Kiddo needs no rivals and that would go badly. I think on my feet when I get the calls from the county and have to make a quick decision about whether a child could work for us.

We’ve got a difficult set of criteria right now because we only are open for one child. The reason for that is two-fold: 1) the small bedroom is set up for only one kid right now (though we could change that with bunk beds) and 2) our vehicle only seats one more person. A bigger vehicle with third row seating is on my to-do list, not necessarily so we can take more kids but really to reduce the amount of “Moooom, she’s touching me!” that currently happens. But it’ll be a while before we can fit a new vehicle into our anemic budget so we really can only take one child at a time. And that is rare in foster care for kids in our age range. Usually sibling sets come into care and need to be placed together if at all possible.

So we wait. Seth waits patiently. He’s fine with the two kids we have. I’m the kid addict who desperately wants a third. So I wait impatiently as all get out. I am restless and excited and nervous and worried about the poor kid who is going to get removed from the home she knows and the parent(s) she loves to come to us. I keep my phone on and near me and jump with excitement when I see the caller ID I’m looking for. And then crash with disappointment and sadness when it’s a child we can’t take.

Being married to me is being married to a rollercoaster. God bless my endlessly patient husband.