Becoming Licensed for Foster Care

 

If you missed yesterdays post read it first HERE or this one won’t make much sense.

There is so much we don’t know and so much we still need to learn but I’m going to attempt to tell you about the first few steps in our journey. 

Step 1: Find and agency to work with and go to orientation.

It’s possible that you can work directly with CPS but in our journey we chose to work with an agency. 

It was important that we found a group to work with that was not only founded on faith but lived out their faith in their everyday practices. 

We decided to work with Arrow Child and Family Ministries. 

We attended orientation in early November.  We immediately felt this was the place for us.  The founder was a foster child himself and is a believer and their commitment to the Lord was evident in all parts of the orientation.

During the orientation you find out more about foster care and adoption and fill out a basic information form that allows them to run a background check on you.  You can’t move forward without a background check.

Part of the information they want to get from you is what kind of children you would be open to.  For our family- we asked for a girl in the 0-3 age range.  You are also asked what kinds of disabilities (physical and emotional) you feel you are equipped to handle. 

A few weeks later we found out we passed the background check (whew) and they would like to move forward with us!

Step 2: Home Check

Well, step 2 is probably to start the training but with the holidays of November and December we might be a little out of order.

A week before Christmas someone from Arrow came out to our house to show us the checklist that would be used during the home study and see what we would need to do to our house to be prepared. 

Everything looked great at the house and the changes are pretty minimal.

The things we need to do in our house are:

• Put a fire extinguisher in the kitchen (do you think they come in cobalt blue?)
• Put smoke detectors in all sleeping rooms, the hallway, the living room and the kitchen.  So in our house that’s every room.  It’s going to be really annoying when the batteries start going out.
• Put a screen on the window in the kitchen that we ripped off the time we got locked out of the house.  Long story.
• Put any dangerous tools in the garage out of reach as well as fertilizers and other chemicals.
• Change this room

from whatever it is currently to a little girls nursery…. or toddler room.

And for the record, it only looks like that because we are converting another space into an office so we can make this room a bedroom.  Oh, who am I kidding.  It looks like this a lot of the time.

The last one is the hardest.  I mean, it’s easy because I love to decorate and I can’t wait to design a little girls room.  But hard because it is a serious step of faith.  We don’t know what age we are getting- zero means a crib, three means a toddler bed.  They have different toys and needs and it’s hard to know how to design a room with so many unknowns.  We don’t know WHEN- it could be three months it could be a year.  God could change our hearts.  We don’t think he will change our hearts for foster/adoption but he could tell us we need to take a boy… or an older child… or siblings… or any number of different things.  Starting to convert the room means we will be totally acting on faith.  A step we are excited to make, excited to see where the Lord leads us… but a tiny bit nervous too. :-)

Step 3:  Lots of training

Keep you posted!