What is your experience adopting a teenager from foster care?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why would you adopt?
You can let the kid keep the foster care status. That is a gift from the heavens when it comes to fafsa and financial aid for college.

Right so many kids in foster care are going to college. Most are kicked out of the program on their 18th birthday.

Yes they are kicked out of the state program, but if they have no parents they will get full financial aid at basically any college. If a middle class parent adopts them they will get no or little aid—and presumably the adoptive parent hasn’t been saving up for 18 years like a birth parent might.

This is not necessarily true and most kids need support in applying and going to college. Most states have college benefits for older kids adopted from foster care. Stop giving bad information.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Most teens will not want to be adopted. Even if they were abused/neglected, they still love their parent and don't want to cut legal ties.

-Lawyer in the foster care system

What about the ones that parental rights have been terminated?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Why would you adopt?
You can let the kid keep the foster care status. That is a gift from the heavens when it comes to fafsa and financial aid for college.

You're absolutely clueless. Like insanely.

[Anonymous]

I have family in a Scandinavian country and the way that the foster care system deals with teenagers is that they basically are taught independent living. So the goal is to not provide parenting as such but how to live, like do laundry, cook, clean the refrigerator, learn to drive, find employment, apply for aid and assistance.

PP, thank you for your post. I found it interesting and worth knowing

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Why would you adopt?
You can let the kid keep the foster care status. That is a gift from the heavens when it comes to fafsa and financial aid for college.

A kid adopted from foster care after age 13 is an independent student for FAFSA, see https://studentaid.gov/help-center/answers/article/can-i-receive-federal-student-aid-if-i-was-or-am-in-foster-care

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Most teens will not want to be adopted. Even if they were abused/neglected, they still love their parent and don't want to cut legal ties.

-Lawyer in the foster care system

What about the ones that parental rights have been terminated?

Some of them still don't want to be adopted. Adopting means the kid gets a new birth certificate with the adopted parents on it. And some teens really do want to be adopted.

[Anonymous]

Teen who are adopted get free tuition at public universities. If they’ve been in the system then they get free tuition among other benefits if adopted after 14. They don’t have to age out to get those benefits.

I’m a CASA. It takes very very special families to take in and adopt foster teens. 95% of the time it is not some Hallmark movie. And that is an understatement.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Most teens will not want to be adopted. Even if they were abused/neglected, they still love their parent and don't want to cut legal ties.

-Lawyer in the foster care system

There are teens who want to be adopted. There are teens who do not. If they do not, they’re not going to be forced to be adopted. Their wants are taken into consideration. So your point is moot.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Why would you adopt?
You can let the kid keep the foster care status. That is a gift from the heavens when it comes to fafsa and financial aid for college.

This. If the teenager wants to be adopted, wait until they no longer qualify for benefits and then legally adopt.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Most teens will not want to be adopted. Even if they were abused/neglected, they still love their parent and don't want to cut legal ties.

-Lawyer in the foster care system

What about the ones that parental rights have been terminated?

Some of them still don't want to be adopted. Adopting means the kid gets a new birth certificate with the adopted parents on it. And some teens really do want to be adopted.

Some do, some don’t. Many do but have been rejected for years and gave up hope of being adopted and put up a wall.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

I have family in a Scandinavian country and the way that the foster care system deals with teenagers is that they basically are taught independent living. So the goal is to not provide parenting as such but how to live, like do laundry, cook, clean the refrigerator, learn to drive, find employment, apply for aid and assistance.

PP, thank you for your post. I found it interesting and worth knowing

There are independent living programs in the us. It’s not a replacement for a family.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Echo the part about finances.

My HS boyfriend was a foster kid and had the same foster parents all through HS. Because they did not adopt him he was eligible for a lot of services and full financial aid in college. The only trade off is that cps will monitor you more — I remember issues like he absolutely couldn’t get arrested (even for stuff like civil disobedience) because that would trigger a cps inquiry that he didnt want to risk.

My bf’s foster dad worked in the system (and had been basically a foster kid himself) and had handpicked my bf to be a kid that he thought he could help with a level of challenge that wouldn’t be too much for his family. My bf was very high IQ and came from parents that were very high IQ, and had a stable loving home when he was very young. (Neglect and abuse at very young ages has a different impact than it does at older ages and I think is harder to treat because it affects brain development.). His family did have a history of depression and probably bipolar but I think the foster dad felt like that was the sort of thing he could deal with. There was no history of real violence.

Anyway, I don’t have a history of adopting teens so maybe my response is not at all helpful to you, but my experience (I also worked with kids in foster care for a brief period) is that you need to know what you’re capable of, and then find the right match for that. There are a lot of truly wonderful kids languishing in foster care but there are also some real nature/nurture issues that you need to be ready to deal with, including potentially increased genetic risk for mental health and addiction, which is the root cause for a lot of kids who end up in foster care.

I think boys have a harder time finding homes because of the commonly held perception that hurt girls hurt themselves, whereas hurt boys hurt others.

If you’ve never parented a teen before…..teens are tough! But fostering a teen who had a stable childhood from 0-5 might actually be in some ways easier than raising a teen who was severely neglected from 0-4 and whom you adopted at 5.

I also do not have personal experience but a friend fostered then adopted a young teen. Although as said above they sort of handpicked a teen whose level of challenges they thought they could handle, they had never parented a teen before. They ended up divorced. Fwiw, the adoptee did not go to college.