Let me caveat my response: I live in a state where the foster care system has two separate programs:
* Foster care: children with a goal of reunification (to the parents or a relative) are placed in foster homes. If the goal happens to fall through and the child has no other placement available for permanency--the foster parents are considered for adoptive parents. Often, newer foster parents are mistakenly told that a foster placement "has no chance" of being reunited because the parents "couldn't possibly get it together". But the goal IS reunification and this causes a LOT of problems because obviously the state never has a clue whether a parent will decide to get their act together. So if you are considering this route, I will say that you should be keenly aware of the goal. My state is also a "concurrent planning" state--which means that every child in foster care has a "plan A" (reunification) and "plan B" (what happens if they can't be reunified--often adoption, usually by the foster parents). Some foster parents here don't realize that ALL children have a concurrent plan because that's our state rules--so they believe that if the child's plan B is adoption by the foster family, that means it's likely to go that route when in fact MOST kids plan B is adoption by the foster family (unless a previously undiscovered relative shows up).
* Adoption unit: children whose goal is adoption are placed from the adoptive unit. Their legal statuses differ and with those statuses comes SOME level of risk that the adoption won't complete. If a child is placed from the adoptive unit has already gone through TPR is certainly lower risk than a child who has yet to complete TPR... things like that. Because there is a 6-month live-in requirement, yes--these children ARE technically foster children until adoption is finalized... but it is not "fost-adopt". These are adoptive placements with an adoption contract signed when they walk through the door--which only happens after a full disclosure of their history and your approval of the placement after reviewing that (something that doesn't happen with foster care in most states).
We went into straight fostering because we had a bio son and couldn't have more; but because we had a bio--we were worried about being able to love a non-bio child as much. Fostering was a way for us to figure this out before adopting because the kids went home. Of course, it proved not to be a problem.
The process to license for foster care was the same as for adoption in our state--so we did both. After all, we knew it would be a good, long wait for an adoptive placement from the state and that would give us time to foster and really know if we would accept an adoptive placement (assuming one came to us).
Quote:
Originally Posted by RedOakMomma  While still gathering information, someone on this board (I think a foster mom) said that though foster-adoption doesn't have the financial costs associated with international adoption, the amount you "pay" emotionally is just as high or higher. The foster parents I met in our adoption courses said the same thing. It's cheaper and more expensive, all at the same time.
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There's no question that you pay one way or another in the end. And to be honest, I know at LEAST 6 families that have adopted internationally and their children often suffer similar issues (health, learning, behavior, whatever) as children adopted from foster care--in addition to being a different race from their adoptive families. Plus, the timeline from start to finish was sometimes well over a year--sometimes multiple years.
So for us, we didn't really see the point in spending thousands of dollars plus time and travel (the travel being a bigger problem for our bio son) for a child we could just as well adopt out of our foster care system.
When I see what my friends going through international foster care go through, I'm not sure I see a LOT of difference. There is absolutely less interference in their day-to-day lives than through fostering although I found that with my adoptive placement through the state--it really wasn't all that different (mind you, adoptive placements usually have no more visitation--so it's just the monthly check in to see how the placement is progressing and that is the same as with my friends that adopt both int'l and private domestic).
I will say this: we DID at one point decide NOT to adopt out of foster care. We had been involved in a message board thread some time back of foster parents who had adopted and many of them noted the difficulties that were passed down from parent to child through their physical makeup... be it emotional processing or illness... whatever. The thing that really hit us was that there were a few that noted that if not for having already raised a few bio children, they'd have thought it was something they were doing. But the fact that they'd already raised children successfully and then seeing some of the more serious issues their adoptive children faced (even those placed from birth) made them feel that there were things that came with those children--predispositions to issues or issues themselves.
We started to really consider that there was a difference between a parent that felt the need to give up their child because they wanted what was best for them, and the parents who were unable to make that decision--or were so oblivious to the lack of care being given to their children that they ultimately lost their legal right to parent. And for us, our bio child was already special needs. We didn't know if we could handle those things. At the time, we truly didn't know where our son's issues would land. He carried an autism spectrum diagnosis and the two other boys we knew with the same issues wound up as inpatients in their early teens--so we were truly concerned.
We adopted our daughter because she WAS freely given up. Her mom was here illegally and actually had a family that wanted to adopt her baby, but ultimately she felt they lived too close and she wouldn't be able to handle seeing the baby after parting with her. Since the state has so many cases in that hospital that they have a CPS nursery, she told the hospital that they could handle finding a family for her. She really wanted nothing to do with it (not out of anger, just out of difficulty). CPS turned to us.
We really felt it was kind of divine intervention that the state could come to us with a baby that was freely given up--which really relieved us of our concerns about adopting from the state. We know darn well that she COULD have other issues. We're not that naive. But the stronger underlying issue of having a parent with the mental capacity and logic that drove her to give her child a better life really made us feel like it was meant to be. In fact, we didn't even WANT a newborn because at that point, our son was almost 5yo and it was a huge age gap. But we thought she was brought to us for a reason.
She is now 18mo and our son is 6yo. Our son is doing better than the children whose paths we worried he would follow (although he still has some lingering problems). And our daughter is full of love and happiness that we missed out on during our son's infancy because of his profound developmental problems. And they love one another tremendously--which is a HUGE blessing. In the end, we think the age gap is a gift: each child is in a very obviously different phase of their lives and it eliminates a lot of potential for competition in many ways.
We feel strongly about continuing to foster because the children caught in that system need good families. It was so much more rewarding to us than we ever imagined. But we also know we need to wait until our kids are a little older (our ad had a hard time with a short-term foster placement in Dec that made it clear that she's not really ready for that).
But when we go back to it, we will be straight foster. We feel complete.
