Foster Care to Adoption

In foster care or foster-adoption you receive a child into your home that has been removed from their primary caregivers for abuse or neglect.  This is intended to be a temporary placement with the primary goal being reunification with their care givers.  Often these caregivers will have to go through drug rehabilitation, parenting classes etc. before they can regain custody of their child.    Your job as the foster parent is to provide love, stability and security to the child while assisting with the reunification process.  Your number one goal CANNOT be to adopt this child permanently.  Yes, about 50% of children who enter care do end up being adopted and most are adopted by their foster parents but you will experience great heartache if permanency is your objective when entering foster-adoption.Adopting a child from the foster care system is a permanent arrangement.     A child who is available for adoption is said to be ‘legally free for adoption”.  This means that the biological parents rights have been permanently terminated by the courts, all possible relative (kinship) placements have been evaluated and rejected and the foster family has declined to permanently adopt the child.  When you are selected to adopt one of these children you are committing to be this child’s family forever.  These children are at least toddlers and are typically school age, not newborns.

The eligibility and requirements to work with a child in state care varies from  state to state.  However, you do not have to own a home, be rich or be healthy to be approved.  You do need to be mature, responsible and stable.  We will help you ascertain the exact requirements in your state. Go to http://www.creatingchristianfamilies.com/ for more information.