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[quote=Anonymous]Alexandria foster parent here.

1. You do not need to reside in the county.  My advice - make sure you are close to the dept of family services hq wherever the county.  You will spend most of your time going back and forth for there.  Also the county dept of health.

2. Different counties have different needs.  
Arlington- about 100 kids in the system.  Large need for teen homes.  If you want a child under 5 you could be waiting a while.
Alexandria- slightly larger than Arlington.  I felt like they were the easiest to work with and most responsive.
Fairfax- has a reputation for nt being reponsive/inundated with potetential foster parents. much larger than the other two counties.  Only one that has an adoption only track.  Arlington has a "foster care only" track.  Alexandria has both but the adoption track isn't official.  Technically none of them are official just options to express your preferences.  All three systems have very few children under 5, especially singletons.  Sibling groups are more common.

Placements are county specific unless you are a foster parent with a private company. However these foster parents generally get the toughest cases.  It's more expensive to pay them so counties will try to place within their own resources first.

Do you work OP?  I found that the hardest part was having mere hours of notice before taking a high needs child into our home (they are all high needs at first as removal is traumatic even for the infants).  Trying to take a "maternity" leave with 8 hours notice was very hard.[/quote]

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