Foster to Adopt NOVA

[Anonymous]

I hope to foster a infant/toddler with the intention of adopting them if they become available for adoption within the next few years. If you have fostered and adopted an infant/toddler in Northern Virginia, can you:

1. Tell me if you went through the county (Arlington, Fairfax, Alexandria) or a private agency?
2. Tell me how long was the entire process from the time the child was placed with you until you adopted?
3. Tell me if you fostered/adopted one child or a sibling group?

Thanks!

[Anonymous]

I'm not going to answer all your questions b/c they provide to much identifying detail. I will tell you a few things.
1. Any agency is likely to tell you that they don't have a 'foster to adopt' program and they view potential parents who primarily want to adopt with suspicion.
2. All of the local counties you identify place with their own foster family first- it is highly unlikely that they will send an infant to a private agency.
3. It is very rare, at the beginning of a case, to know if it is going to end in adoption-- the first goal is always reunification. After that is relatives. After that is adoption.
4. I can think of cases that appeared to be slam dunk adoption that ended in reunification. Similarly, I can think of cases that were certain reunification that ended in adoption.
5. If you are going to adopt- it is always going to be more than a year before you finalize an adoption- frequently more like 2 or 3. A birth parent typically gets about a year to attempt to reunify. Then terminating parental rights takes about a year depending on how many appeals there are. Then the actual adoption process takes about another 6-9 months.
6. I can think of 7 families off the top of my head who have adopted children who were under two when they were placed with them from one of the counties you identified in the last few years. All of these families were on board with reunification if it had been safe. They had mostly fostered other children who had been reunified-- e.g. they had 'proven' themselves to the county.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I hope to foster a infant/toddler with the intention of adopting them if they become available for adoption within the next few years. If you have fostered and adopted an infant/toddler in Northern Virginia, can you:

1. Tell me if you went through the county (Arlington, Fairfax, Alexandria) or a private agency?
2. Tell me how long was the entire process from the time the child was placed with you until you adopted?
3. Tell me if you fostered/adopted one child or a sibling group?

Thanks!

1. Over the past 12 years, went through the training and was certified in both Alexandria or Arlington. Both are small and both place few infants/toddlers. They now tell you that you are primarily a "resource parent" with the goal of fostering until the child can return home. Adoption stats for both places are pretty low. The preference for infants/toddlers was having a stay at home parent. Cuts down on their costs and admin overhead in terms of getting children to appointments, paying for daycare vouchers. etc. Private agencies by and large deal with therapeutic and harder to place older children.

2. Both times, the classes and home study were completed in a relatively normal time frame - maybe 9/10 mths at the most. As a single parent, I never had any placements and I ended up both times adopting privately on my own and never ended up fostering. I am considering going back to do it again but would only do emergency short term or respite placements nothing long term/

3. I was called about taking a few placements and all were single children. I am sure there are siblings that need placed together.

If your goal is really to adopt, I would suggest that you go ahead and pursue adoption via private domestic adoption or international adoption. It is possible to privately domestically adopt a child who is older than an infant.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:[

1. Over the past 12 years, went through the training and was certified in both Alexandria or Arlington. Both are small and both place few infants/toddlers. They now tell you that you are primarily a "resource parent" with the goal of fostering until the child can return home. Adoption stats for both places are pretty low. The preference for infants/toddlers was having a stay at home parent. Cuts down on their costs and admin overhead in terms of getting children to appointments, paying for daycare vouchers. etc. Private agencies by and large deal with therapeutic and harder to place older children.

I guess it depends on how you are defining small and 'few' infants/toddlers.
Most recently- Arlington had 90 children in care and Alexandria had 88. Of those Arlington had 5 children under the age of 1 and 26 children under the age of 5. Alexandria had 5 children under the age of 1 and 23 under the age of 5. http://www.dss.virginia.gov/geninfo/reports/children/fc.cgi

In terms of adoption- Arlington had 31 children with the goal of adoption- 15 of them in the 5 and under cohort.
Alexandria had 37 children with the goal of adoption, 13 of those in the 5 and under cohort. I would not consider having more than a 1/3 of the population to have a goal of adoption to be a 'low adoption statistic.'

I also disagree about the statement that there is a preference for a stay at home parent-- I think this is simply false.

[Anonymous]

me again- I meant to post the adoption link as well-
http://www.dss.virginia.gov/geninfo/reports/children/adoption.cgi

[Anonymous]

To the previous poster who said that no infants were placed with them, were you open to fostering Black/African American infants?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:To the previous poster who said that no infants were placed with them, were you open to fostering Black/African American infants?

I don't think I was the previous poster- but I actually don't think an county would license someone who was not open to fostering all races.

[Anonymous]

Op, call your local cps. Ask all of your questions. I'm not in dc, but I used to work in another area of social services and learned that it is very rare for infants and toddlers to go to foster care. Family members are often willing to take them in, so rarely do they need foster care. Good luck to you. If you have it in you to foster or adopt older children, please do your research first.