2012 Family Assesment

When you are a foster home, you have to re-certify every year to stay open and for us, that's in June. There are always quarterly visits from your family worker, but each year you must complete the annual review, which requires that you've each had 6 hours of training each year, that you resubmit your acceptance scale (what you are or are not willing to accept, physically, emotionally, age, sibling size...), physicals for each family member (including pets), background checks on any family member who might stay with the children, etc...... Nothing difficult, but time consuming, and deciding to recommit to keep your home open for another year.

Several times throughout the spring of 2012 we had 'the talk'. After the boys arrival and knowing our strong intent to adopt, we informed our worker that we were not comfortable taking an older child who might enter our home with anger or other behaviors that might be projected at our young sons. While we wanted to help, and saying no was always hard, their safety was our top priority. So, after the 7 year old who stayed for 24 hours while I was still pregnant with Elijah, we hadn't said yes to any call which was rapidly approaching a year. We wondered why we were staying open when we knew our willingness to say yes was so small. That the child we would accept had to fit such tight criteria constraints. But after each talk, we both agreed that it just didn't seem right to close our home yet, so we took the required steps and recertified for another year.


And why not, there was still an empty seat in the van!



Elijah, Timothy, Mason