IT'S ALL HAPPENING! We are foster parents.

Visual approximation

They say the only constant in life is change. The bunk beds being installed in our guest room today are proof positive of that. This post has been percolating in my mind for five days. It occurs to me that I never thought in advance how I would write this one. The one where we got kids. 

At approximately 3:26 p.m. on Monday, July 22, 2013, Texas Child Protective Services confirmed with our adoption agency the (pending) placement of three foster children in our home. At long last! For better or worse, Shawn and I are going to be parents. In a great big hurry. Like ripping off a band-aid. 

How can I make this announcement sound traditional? It’s a girl! And a boy! And another girl! Bless their hearts. And they will come to live with us on Friday. Details! I will share all I can. As these are children in foster care and not legally ours, confidentiality must be maintained for the time being. I can say that they are a 5 year old girl, a 4 year old boy, and a 2 year old girl. They’re from a mostly rural background, they’re white, and they need a lot of help to overcome the abuse they have endured. The reason they’re coming to live with us so quickly is that CPS is removing them from their current foster home and wants a new placement right away. Two of the kids require play therapy, and their foster parents of the last year or so can’t meet that need. With children in foster care, meeting these needs is not optional – it is state law. So the state’s caseworker began searching for a potential foster-adoptive family, even though the kids aren’t legally free for adoption at this time. The state’s goal is unrelated adoption, as they expect that the children will not be able to return home to their biological family. This is in line with our plans to foster what they call “legal risk” children until they’ve achieved termination of parental rights and we can adopt them. 

So. 

The rest is a blur. I really don’t even have time to write this. I’m doing it for myself, so that I can take a minute to look at what is happening to us and maybe remember how I felt in the dozen feverish days I had before we became a party of five.

I could not write anything two weeks ago when Shawn and I were selected for another ‘staffing’ call for three Hispanic girls in Houston. It was once bitten, twice shy for me as we waited for the results of the caseworker conference call to come in and again, we weren’t chosen to be the family for those girls. I’d been losing faith in a system that hadn’t given us kids for two years. Two agencies. Three different adoption paths. Two chances at being picked that both fell through. Financial barriers. Heartbreaking risks and disappointments. A while back I took my little collection of if-we-get-kids stuff and put it in the closet where I couldn’t see it anymore. I was giving up. A week later, my phone rang.

She got the call today,
One out of the gray.
And when the smoke cleared,
It took her breath away.
She said she didn't believe,
It could happen to me.
I guess we're all one phone call from our knees. 

“Closer to Love” – Mat Kearney

We had four hours between the time the phone call came in and the time CPS confirmed they were placing the kids in our home. Now we have 6 days until the punkins arrive. We get to meet them only once before then, on Monday, for an hour. Right now we don’t even have a photograph. The growing pains are unreal. My emotions change every ten minutes, vacillating between joy, excitement, doubt and terror. My phone rings even more often than that, with calls from the agency and close family (the only ones who knew – until now!). Our to-do list is unreal. How do you prepare to raise three kids you don’t know in two weeks? Finally we are the ones ordering bunk beds and calling family and making plans – it’s all happening. Fast. This week has been the maybe the most surreal of my life. I thank God for our families. They are living proof of why these kids are so important. Family can be everything. And ours have done more in this one week – already – than I can ever repay them for. Bunks and books and toys and bedding, advice and infinite research on school, daycare, healthcare...We have car seats and mattress pads. We are going to have to buy DIAPERS. We’re swamped with paperwork, rules and regulations. As Shawn said, it feels as if we’re moving, but in our own house. Suddenly our books and trinkets are being packed away to make room for little clothes and toys.

We’re making room in our hearts as well. Just two weeks to adjust after 12 years together doing whatever the heck we wanted to do, whenever we wanted to do it. Shawn’s working on what will be our new daily routine. I may have to trade in my car. We wonder what is going to be the last movie we see together in a theatre.

We know it’s not about us. It’s about these kids. Three little ones who are about to have one of the worst weeks of their short, painful lives so far. On Tuesday, they go to a meeting to say goodbye to their biological mother forever. On Friday, they leave the foster home where they have been for over a year. And after all that shock and trauma, they will land here. I know there’s no way any of us will be ready – in any sense of the word - for what’s coming. Shawn compared it to standing at the edge of a cold pool. “You know it’s going to be cold and painful but you just hold your breath and jump in.” Just in case, though – could somebody keep a life preserver handy?

My momma told me to pick the very best one. And you are not it.

Mother’s Day is bittersweet around here. On the one hand, I’ve got a wonderful mom. She’s so smart, thoughtful and caring. She kept our elbows off the table. She managed to raise three girls who are able to navigate this challenging life, which is more than foster kids are equipped to manage, not to mention most of my students. I’ve got an amazing grandma too, still loving and funny and kind at nearly 90 years old. I’m so thankful to be able to spend time with them today, on their special day.

On the other hand, we lost my mother-in-law a year and a half ago and I miss her a lot. Nancy was one-of-a-kind; her spirit stays with me. And my father’s mom, the closest thing to a role model I had in this life, has been gone now seven years. Things haven't been quite right since she left us. And then there’s me. I’m not anybody's mom. Still.

I got really close the other day. I haven’t been able to write about this until now. Shawn and I got the call on a regular Thursday in early April. My students were out of control – you can’t leave them for a second – as I tried desperately to hear what our caseworker was saying on the phone. She was saying we had finally been chosen for what they call a “staffing,” which is essentially a conference call between caseworkers on which you may or may not be chosen for some actual real life KIDS. Kids that would come LIVE in our HOUSE shortly thereafter. Kids we would adopt. This was the real deal. We were being seriously considered. At last.

The first question that comes to your mind is WHO? Which kids that we submitted for was she calling about? At any given time there are up to 30 possibilities for whom we've submitted our home study. This group was a sibling set of three, Houston area, 2 girls and one baby boy, half white half Hispanic, one in elementary and the other two younger. Their caseworker was considering us for placement. We would find out in a week if we were to be the parents of three children.

I’m pretty sure my husband spent that week in shock. He didn't say much. My mind was reeling with the changes that would come if we were chosen. Car seats! Diapers! Schools! Chicken nuggets! We wrestled with whether to tell anyone. Should we get our close family and friends excited, when the potential for disappointment was so great? You see, on this staffing phone call there would be three families considered, not just us. So we had a 33% chance of getting them, and a 66% chance of nothing. My husband is the optimist. When I see a 66% chance of rain, I know it’s gonna rain.

In the end we told some people and not others, kind of weighing who could best handle the potential loss and whom we wanted to spare. Our caseworker was to be on the call one week later, so the following Thursday we waited with bated breath for the call to come through. I had to be at work – we were reviewing for the STAAR test – so I tried to maintain appearances while I watched the phone. She called around 1:00 pm. I could hear it in her voice when I answered. They chose another family.

It’s hard to know why we weren’t the best pick for the kids. We don’t get to make the case for ourselves. The staffing is caseworker-to-caseworker; each agency presents their family to the CPS worker on the phone, one at a time, and in Houston she said they usually call back an hour later with their decision. They don’t say why we weren’t selected. The only thing we know is the family that got the kids was Hispanic; maybe that was it, a culture thing. We kept picturing the new parents as gorgeous rich people with doctorates in Early Childhood Development.

I know it doesn’t really matter why. I know if you are like 90% of the population you’re thinking to yourself, everything happens for a reason, those weren’t your kids, your kids are still out there, everything in its own time, etc. And I thank you, because I know you don’t mean to sound cliché and obvious and hollow. You haven’t worked and waited and wondered and worried. You’re trying to be nice.

If you’re near your kids today, take a look and imagine if you had to fight for them like we are. If you had to be fingerprinted and evaluated and inspected and interviewed, just to get a phone call saying not yet, it’s not you, not your time. We chose this path, but it is hard and we’re in a heartbreaking phase, the part where some other couple is buying bunk beds and painting pink walls and calling family with good news. Maybe think of and pray for the foster kids out there that are lost in transition, traumatized and separated and sad and lonely because of the mothers and fathers who let them down. We got a broadcast this week for two elementary-age kids whose parents are in a cult. A cult. And it was our turn to say no, those aren’t our kids.

Once I was in a parking garage and came across a woman who was disoriented and bawling. She had clearly been drinking. I asked her what I could do. Did she need help? What she said was so surprising. “I’m a terrible mother.” And just then I knew she wasn’t. Because she was there, in a dark garage alone, crying over her children.

One of my students refuses to understand why I want kids. He says that I think it looks easy from the outside but I’m going to get more than I bargained for. And he could be right. But he doesn’t understand that’s how all of life is, how it’s going to be for him as well. Harder than you thought. I told him I want our family to grow, I want to share our love and wisdom, I want to read books at bedtime and cut up food and care that much about someone, even if I have to worry that much more, work that much harder. Even if I’m exhausted. Even if I’m not the best mom ever and I end up sobbing in a parking lot somewhere. I’ll take that chance.

Ultimately I want to say thanks, thanks to the mothers who are just out there doing their best. That’s all you can really do. Thanks to the supermoms with the crust-free sandwiches and monogrammed blankies. Thanks to my students' moms that do the unimaginable, working long hours into the night and still keeping their children fed and their clothes washed and letting them know they're loved, making something out of nothing day in and day out. And a special thanks to those who go out of their way to be mothers to the motherless. I hope someday to join you.

Out of the mouth of babes

Something's missing.

It was a busy week around our house, and stressful. We had not one but two inspections of our home scheduled this week. We cleaned for days and double-checked all of our safety requirements were met in preparation for visits from our adoption agency as well as a more official visit from Residential Child Care Licensing (RCCL), a division of the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services (DFPS). We got the call last week that we’d been selected at random for a foster home inspection by the state, and our agency wanted to do a dry run before they came. So Tuesday morning Shawn met with our caseworker for a walkthrough and Thursday morning I waited on the state inspector.

The state evaluates about one-third of all licensed foster homes per year. We were surprised to be chosen because we had assumed they didn’t come unless there were kids placed in the home. This is not the case, however. So I held my breath as the inspector made her way to our front porch. I hadn’t slept well; images of citations danced through my head. Did I leave out the Neosporin? Lock up the Windex? Was there an outlet somewhere without an outlet cover?

I wanted everything to be perfect. The inspector came. We talked about the agency, the training we’ve had, the communications we receive. We walked through the house and I showed her all of the steps we have taken to meet the safety standards. She was very pleased, and we received a report with no citations. We had a bowl of pasta salad in the refrigerator that was not covered – a more hard-nosed inspector, she said, would’ve cited us for that – but she just reminded me that we couldn’t have open food containers and moved right along. Whew.

Living in a fishbowl is taxing enough. Living in an empty fishbowl is much harder. Striving so hard to meet these ridiculous requirements, being told what a fabulous job we’ve done, and then going back to waiting for a match…it’s very anti-climactic. If everything is so fabulous, the environment so perfect, then why must we wait so long? The pasta salad is covered, ok? Now give us some kids.

_________________________________________________________________________________

Teaching in middle school, I hear a lot of horrible things come out of children’s mouths. Foul language, bullying, apathy, disrespect – it can get pretty depressing some days. After a certain point, one is not often surprised by anything that the kids say. But one day this week one of my girls said something that stopped me in my tracks.

“Miss, I had a dream you got your baby.”

My heart shot up into my throat. You WHAT?

Some of my more conscientious students know about our search for children. They tend to view adoption as being only about babies. I like to explain the process to them because I think it opens minds to different definitions of family, as well as promotes awareness of the cause of abused children.

She went on. “For some reason they dropped him off at school. I think he was mixed [race]. You had to leave…I think to go sign the papers. So you left him with us and we were feeding him chicken nuggets.”

I was shocked that our adoption had made it into her subconscious. Not as surprised about the chicken nuggets. Honestly, I wasn’t sure what to think of this. I’m not much of a believer in signs or visions or finding reasons for everything. But this gave me pause. Why would she dream this? What is the meaning of her telling me? For someone like me who has been through so much on this road, it was almost too much to take. Some things just defy explanation. Then she told me the ending. 

“You came back to school and said, ‘Come to me, my baby.’ And he ran to you. And then I woke up.”

From her mouth to God’s ears.

Counting chickens before we're matched

Most potential adoptive chickies are in sibling groups of three.

Since we were approved as a foster/adoptive home in mid-December, forty-two children have passed through my inbox. I've made a binder now, with printouts of all the emails, broadcasts and photos (if included) that have been sent over from the agency. Just keeping track of who's who, who's still on the list and who's been taken off, the paperwork, names and ages and circumstances has become a part-time job. One that I'm really enjoying, because being up to our ears in broadcasts increases our odds of being matched!

So how does it look, the foster/adoption process by the numbers? We have been at this for about a month and a half with the new fost-to-adopt agency. Here's how it breaks down so far:

42: number of children for whom we've received broadcasts
3: average number of siblings in each broadcast
12: number of broadcasts for which we've submitted our home study
2: number of broadcasts for children with whom we did not get matched
1: number of broadcasts withdrawn from consideration due to CPS error
4: number of broadcasts for which we declined to submit our home study
9: number of broadcasts for available children for whom we're still in the running
24: number of hours we get to decide whether to submit for each broadcast

We've seen kids aged 9 mos to 14 years, with an average age of 5 years. 24 of the kids have been boys, 18 are girls. 7 of the broadcasts have been for legal risk foster children, while the other 9 are for children that are already legally free for adoption. Overall, we have already received more broadcasts in a month and a half with our new agency that we did in 9 months with the last one.

One thing I can't allow myself to count is the time as it passes. The years since we started this process, the months of paperwork and training, the weeks and days as potential kids come and go. That's the part of this gig that gets really hard after...well, after a while. I said I wouldn't count.

On the bright side, my mind is filled with images of precious kids out there with whom we could be matched, with the possibilities of parenting. I wish I could share them here, the photos, the inconsistent descriptions, the crazy names! My husband said to me this week, "Sweetie, our kids are going to have weird names." There's just no way around it. We have not received ONE broadcast that doesn't contain at least one child with a name that's either unusual, misspelled, or just plain nuts. Since we can't go around telling everyone "We didn't name them, they're adopted!" we are going to have to allow folks to assume we chose these bizarre monikers or we don't know how to spell. But then, "What's in a name? that which we call a rose By any other name would smell as sweet."

Now You've Done It (or, List of Expired Items)

Our home, now operated by the state of TX.

Caseworker e-mails paraphrased:
Happy New Year! Could you please send me proof of updates to the following by Friday, January 4:
·         Auto Insurance for Honda & Nissan
          – Expired 11/24/12
·         Auto Inspection for Nissan – Expired 12/12
·         Driver’s License Renewal – Expired 6/7/12
·         Dog's Pet Vaccinations – Expired 12/8/12
·         Auto Registration for Nissan – Expires 1/13
And while we're at it, we'll need to schedule your quarterly home safety check, could you send a date by January 7?

Clearly, Big Brother has made himself at home at our place. As of December 19th, WE ARE OFFICIALLY A STATE LICENSED FOSTER/ADOPTIVE FAMILY HOME! We are so excited to have completed five months of training, documentation, interviews, and home visits in order to get that fancy little certificate pictured to the left. What it means is that our home is now, quite literally, operated by the State of Texas Department of Family and Protective Services, and will remain as such until any adoption is finalized in court. The list above is anything and everything that has gone out of date since we started working with the agency in August of this year. So THIS is how it's gonna be.

I am thrilled to report that we have, in the four business days since we've been licensed, already received FIVE broadcasts regarding children in need of legal risk foster placement. Legal risk (as opposed to emergency placement) means that the state is 90-95% sure that the child or children are headed for non-relative adoption; however, their parents' legal rights have not yet been terminated in court. Some already have court dates set for termination, some don't. Some are still having supervised visits with biological family members, some aren't. Some of the broadcasts are detailed and well thought out, with photos - while still others are sloppy and vague.

We are cautiously optimistic about the fact that we have already seen such an improvement in the access to available children - the main reason we switched to foster from straight-adopt. Even the small summaries that come through are a tough read; in one case both parents addicted to prescription pain meds and in all kinds of trouble with the law; in another, two out of a sibling group of seven are in need of a home in a big hurry due to multiple placements after severe neglect. In yet another, the kids' biological grandparents simply can't manage the task any longer, but would still like to see the kids once they're adopted (arrangements like this are voluntary, but are often kept if in the best interest of the child or children).

We've submitted our home study for consideration for all of the broadcasts we've received. Three of them were for sibling groups of three and two for sibling groups of two. The process mirrors straight-adopt in that for each broadcast for which we submit, we wait to hear if we are chosen by the Child Protective Services (CPS) caseworker for that group. There is no timetable. There is no guarantee. Once chosen, we'd have access to more info and to visits with the kids before deciding to bring them into our home. Any kids we foster would be with the intention to adopt, so we must choose carefully. If the parental rights are ultimately terminated, as the State expects they will be, we can adopt them as soon as they've been in our home six months. No one else gets a shot; they're ours.

Reality has been sinking in slowly but surely. My husband and I made a list of all the things we'd need to acquire in order to make this a kid-friendly home (I had to get him to pretend we had an anonymous benefactor, so he'd participate without seeing only the money!). My mom and I spent an hour in Toys R Us staring at car seats, bless her heart. And yes, everything is renewed and inspected and vaccinated that needed to be. Welcome to life in the fish bowl. One can only imagine what things will be like once children live here. I'm going to need another bedroom just for the paperwork! It's a huge hassle I'm REALLY starting to look forward to!

Thanks to any readers for your continued interest and support. Kindly pray that a great match will be made soon! Lastly, our hearts go out to those involved in international adoptions from Russia. The recent politicizing of Russia-to-U.S. adoptions has put thousands of children in jeopardy, children who live in some of the most deplorable orphanages in the world. Please pray that for the sake of human rights and all kids in need that these children will have opportunities to find forever homes. <3

A lockbox inside a lockbox

CPR training is every bit as exciting as it looks.

It's always been my policy at work not to let anyone know all I'm capable of, lest they expect me to do it. As I am now, weeks or even days from being licensed to foster parent, I worry about the things I know how to do. I know how to administer psychotropic medications. I know how to restrain a kid who is trying to injure me without causing harm to him/her. How to stop him from choking me, biting me, kicking me, grabbing me. How to perform CPR. How to properly discipline a traumatized child, one who may be acting out as a result of any number of tragedies. How to keep a Life Book so the child has a continuing sense of place, understanding of self. I know how to protect him, care for him, and properly provide for him. I'm just afraid I may have to do it.

Over the past two months, Shawn and I have been working with our new agency to become a licensed foster home. Outside of the mountains of paperwork we've completed and 20 hours of training, we can prove to anyone that our cars are inspected and insured, that we've paid all our taxes. We can show you our three-year certified driving history, our diplomas, the fire escape route for our home. We've documented where we'll be if there's a disaster, we've wall-mounted a fire extinguisher, we've re-vaccinated all the cats. I'm in the process of background-checking my parents and sisters. The health inspector and fire inspector have signed off. Essentially, it's all over but the lockboxes.

MINIMUM STANDARDS FOR CHILD-PLACING AGENCIES
Subchapter J, Foster Care Services: Medical and Dental
Division 4, Medication Storage and Destruction
§749.1521. (4) Store medication covered by Schedule II of the Texas Controlled Substances Act under double lock in a separate container.

The only thing left between us and a foster license is a series of locks. Locked up tools, locked up cleaning supplies, and in the case of certain medications, a locked box inside another locked box. As I think about my errands for the weekend, it just barely strikes me as odd that I have to find a way to keep Schedule II medications under double lock as required by law. It no longer occurs to me that it's strange that I even know what I'm talking about (I know most people don't). What I know is if I don't have a lockbox inside a lockbox by Tuesday morning, we won't get our license. Tuesday is the first of two visits by our caseworker that will finalize the process, part interview and part home inspection. After that we will begin to receive broadcasts for available children again, this time for legal-risk foster placement in our home with the intention to adopt once the child or children are legally free.

I'm excited that Shawn and I have worked hard and have nearly survived another trial on our unique path to parenthood. And I'll have all those locks in place on time. What I'm more concerned about is what we are unlocking. This license is the key to opening ourselves up again, to more children with the potential to become ours. Opening up our home to the fishbowl that is foster care and the visits from CPS and agency caseworkers and child advocates. Opening our minds to the idea of documenting every doctor visit, every pill taken, every t-shirt purchased, every altercation, every breath it seems, that this child or children will take in our care. Opening our hearts and our arms to troubled kids who will not be ready to love us back. To be honest, it's my telltale heart I wish I could put inside of two locked boxes sometimes. But it's a bit late for that. Because soon, everybody is going to know what I can do.

Standing on the precipice

There are approximately 30,000 children in foster care
in the state of Texas alone.

What comes to mind when you hear "foster home?" Is the connotation positive? Most likely it is not. Foster homes and foster parents are just one piece in an impossible puzzle of state caseworkers, therapists, doctors, birth families, extended families, judges, and abused children in limbo. One hopes that when the pieces come together, the child is in a safe, nurturing, forever home. But the picture doesn't always come out that way.

The term "foster home" isn't positive for me, either. From terrible news stories to my own students, I've just never gotten a good impression of this necessary but imperfect aspect of the child protection system. Which is why I approached with such trepidation our meeting last Friday with a new adoption agency - the first step in our effort to become just that - a foster family.

¹fos·ter  adj   \ˈfȯs-tər, ˈfäs-\

: affording, receiving, or sharing nurture or parental care
though not related by blood or legal ties

At our current straight-adoption agency, we have support group meetings every two months. At the most recent gathering, I had the chance to ask an actual CPS caseworker where the children are. I asked her why we are seeing so few broadcasts and even then mostly for large sibling groups or children with severe needs. She said the rest are being adopted directly by their foster parents, a truth I had come to realize but was thankful to have confirmed by someone working directly in the field. Therefore those kids are never made available to straight-adoption families.

Since that meeting, Shawn and I were turned down on our submission for Destiny and her brother. We were sent another broadcast for a sibling group of four kids, which we declined. Around the same time, with the help of some good friends who made an introduction, I spoke at length with a foster/adoption expert about her experiences fostering 23 children and adopting six. Her comments on the place in line of straight-adopt (from foster) parents are that we are at "the bottom of the totem pole" and, more succinctly, "screwed."

Armed with this new information, we met a week later with a new agency that places children in dual-licensed foster/adoptive homes (our current agency handles straight-adopt only). We learned about the process - more paperwork, more training - that we'd have to go through to get foster licensed in addition to our already approved adoptive home study. It seems likely we'd be finished with that process in October and ready to receive a foster placement.

2 types of foster homes were described to us by the new agency. One type, “legal risk,” is where the state is 90-95% sure that they have exhausted birth family and extended family placement options and that the child or sibling group is headed for termination of parental rights and adoption. The second type, an “emergency placement” foster home, is one where the state has in some cases almost no information about the child/children, but needs a foster home in which to place them, sometimes straight from the police squad car that removed them from the abusive birth home. In those cases the state will have at least a year to decide where the child ends up.

What’s troubling me is that the new agency has said that the wait and competition we could face as a “legal risk” foster home could be nearly the same and just as fruitless as our straight-adopt experience. This really surprised me, as I’d assumed the risk we would take on as any kind of foster home would pay off in the closer proximity to available (or nearly available) children for adoption, the ones we were told were all being adopted by foster parents before they ever get to straight-adopt. The new agency, however, is in the process of adding “emergency placement” families to their caseload, because of the fact that potential adoptive parents are having less success as “legal risk" foster homes. For my husband and I, the idea of becoming an “emergency placement” home (when our goal is adoption) is still much too terrifying to consider. Watching kids come and go with no assurance they’ll be part of our future is not what we wanted, and the truth is I guess we’re not desperate enough to try that. Yet.

Today I'm going to let the new agency know that we're transferring our case over to them for dual licensing. We've been wrestling with this decision for about a week and a half since that initial meeting, and I'm still so nervous to relinquish this much control that I can hardly write the email. I've never been bungee jumping, but as we stand on the edge of the abyss that is the foster care system, I hope and pray that there is something or someone there to catch us as we fall. And that we don't end up on the news.