Breastfeeding Fosterlings? - Page 4

[dogretro]

Sierra, that SUCKS that you had such a hard time w/ WIC! We do cloth diapers, so, IMO, the highest payment for a baby is the formula.

We only take in babies and toddlers at the mo, but I was thinking about it last night & we would easily burn thru the stipend check if we took older kids (which we plan on doing later in life). Just a trip to the zoo can easily run around $50/kid! I remember dh and I took an afternoon out to go to the movies last summer (matinee show) & between paying the sitter (kids were aged 15 mos and 3 mos, so we paid a lot, lol), tickets, snacks, and parking, it easily cost us $100. It was a great afternoon out & I would do it again in a second, but that is part of the package deal of having 349584 kids, I guess!

I can also see how if you took in several young school-aged kids and never signed them up for any activities or anything like that, you could make some money. Not really worth it, IMO.

[dogretro]

Cruncy mommy, we did eventually get over having CYF involved in our lives. Our CW is great, so it's not bad for us. If we had a crap CW, it would be much harder. Even if foster care is not something that is right for you at this moment, it might be in the future

It is extremely strange to bring home someone else's infant and then receive money for taking care of him/her.

[crunchy_mommy]

Originally Posted by dogretro

Cruncy mommy, we did eventually get over having CYF involved in our lives. Our CW is great, so it's not bad for us. If we had a crap CW, it would be much harder. Even if foster care is not something that is right for you at this moment, it might be in the future

It is extremely strange to bring home someone else's infant and then receive money for taking care of him/her.

I can only imagine!!

You're right, it might be right for us later. I'll have to keep an open mind. I have had a rough time this past year and the years before that were even rougher so I guess I need to feel more secure & confident in my own life & my life as a mother. I have a tendency to rush head-first into things and I'm taking this thread as a warning sign to slow down & think carefully before diving into something I'm not prepared to handle!

[heatherdeg]

Originally Posted by Sierra

I met one person who took on fostering with an attitude like it was her job. That is not to say that she wasn't loving or caring toward the children -- she was clearly passionate about her vocation -- but she considered it her work and she didn't have another job.

Honestly, I have no problem with this. We have a family like that right here in my town (they just got certified for med frag kids and have one of them that left us last year). They are excellent for those kids. They love them dearly and advocate for them fiercely. Because of the med frag status, they can now have one of the parents at home full-time.

We're held to a higher standard than daycare and get paid less. Yes, we all have a licensing process (although fps is more rigorous than a simple background check) and have to maintain a physical "facility" that is inspected annually, but to my knowledge, they're not required to do the continuing ed. Even if they are, they are not advocating for the kids to doctors, therapists, schools and often--the courts. They're also often not providing food and certainly not seeing them through rough nights, bathing, clothes shopping, etc. The alternative for many of the infants is boarder care at a hospital (where they are NOT getting NEARLY enough attention for appropriate bonding and development) or group homes... and in our state, once they're 13yo, they can go to a shelter (one of our fks sisters landed there).

To take the care and advocacy of kids seriously enough for it to be a job is a taboo topic that needs to stop. Daycare takes money to take care of kids. More of it than we do and they're doing much less (not to minimize or criminalize daycare workers--I'm just comparing the roles). Why is it so horrible to think that we are doing something so awful to care for them full-time given their alternatives?

People don't think. And nobody really asks in-depth because they assume what they see on TV is the extent of what there is to know about it (and not just fostering).

I absolutely see my "job" as a foster parent as more than just watching someone else's child in their absence. And I do a lot of research on behalf of our placements and advocate for them. Sometimes it's not even just for the kids, but for the FAMILY. Lots of foster parents have had to go to bat for birthparents and families where the state doesn't have the exposure to the situation to see things that we see.


The "in your lives" thing creeps up on you. I think many of us got a blast of "invasion of privacy" during the homestudy, but it was brief. After that, it's really a slow buildup that you actually get used to.

That being said, we're closing our home and to be honest, I will actually miss some of these people. We've had some really good resource workers (like a cw for the fps that doesn't change case to case) and love our current one; and our licensing inspector is awesome. We know who is who and how to get things done. We know that the kids that leave our home are changed--even if only a tiny bit--for the better.

[averlee]

I couldn't read without piping up. When I was 16, I ended up in foster care. I had never been in any trouble or anything, but my family was...ummm...messed up. I landed with an awesome family and stayed with them till I was 18. Not me personally, but many many teenage girls who end up in foster care are pregnant or young mothers already. Sometimes their child is placed in fostercare alongside the mother like siblings, but often, the (teen) mother is a foster kid but her child is not. What I'm trying to get around to, is that a great way to bring a baby into your home, might be to foster a teenage mother.