Third Time's The Charm - Mr. M

 Thursday, August 13, 2020

I woke up this morning with an intuitive feeling.  Now, I don't always speak about my intuition or my family's intuitive "power" but sometimes you just can't ignore it.  My VERY FIRST thought was of our future foster son.  

I had a deep feeling that today, we were going to receive a call.  Now, that call could be for the "one", our forever kid, or could be for a temporary placement.  Either way, I didn't know.  I kept this feeling to myself until it happened.

First, it was a message saying that we were officially approved by DCS as being certified and that our home was now "Open". Next was the message the agency was actively searching for a kiddo for our family.  A couple of hours later we got word.

It was a message to check out a profile on www.adoptuskids.org.  So I checked it out and watched the video while I was waiting for my lunch order.  I thought, "Okay, we will see if this kid seems like a good fit on the surface and if so then we will ask for more information".  It only took about 5 minutes to read the public profile and watch the video.  I remember seeing this kid before in our initial searches but for whatever reason, it did not stick with me. The time may not have been right.

After reviewing the information I sent the link to my wife to review. She was babysitting our God-Daughter at the time.  I asked her to look at it and then let me know and we were interested and would ask the agency for more information.  About an hour later she replied back "interested".  

And so, now we are off to the races...I sent the agency a message saying we would like to know more about this kiddo (you know, I can not reveal their name because of confidentiality but who ever our kid will be I may refer to them as "Landon" because I wanted to name my son that if we ever had one LOL).  The agency then asked what time we both would be together and we could schedule a time with his case worker to learn more about him.  So we chose this evening and we will see. 

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UPDATE

So, we had our conference call with our Youth Villages representative and the kiddo's Case worker.  We were on the phone for about an hour asking questions and learning more about him.  We laughed a little and there were certain behaviors that I said that even my 4 year old nephew is guilty of exhibiting and myself at one time.  We try to be as thorough as possible in our questioning, trying to learn EVERYTHING about him to make sure that we would be a good fit for him.  Our Youth Villages team is amazing in considering our home, our family activities and capacity before presenting a child to us.  Honestly, after everything we had to do to become foster parents (between the paperwork, biographies, and interviews) there is not much they don't know about us.

Actually, it surprised me when they said, "we see you like model building, he would love that as well!".  I was surprised because it is kind of a minor footnote in my hobbies but hey, they knew it.

So, why ask so many questions and not just accept any and every kid for placement?  Well, honestly, after reading and learning some of the profiles you really do need to ask a lot of questions.  You see, we need to make sure that the child can fit into our capacity as parents.  That we provide a safe, secure, and fun home for him.  Not a home that may be filled with anxiety or uncertainty because my wife and I are fighting against each other on the proper parenting technique. Additionally, it would be worse to invite a kid in our home with the hopes and expectations of being a family and then realize that it is not working out (causing property damage, physically hurting my wife, pets, or others that would be beyond our capacity).  It would cause unnecessary trauma to the kid and us to do so.  In that spirit we try to be as thorough as possible.  I will say that DCS loves to LABEL everything about a kid.  For example, someone might have dropped a match and now they are labeled with "fire setting".  So we have to ask the history of each behavior and the frequency of each. Most of the time they are minor incidents that any normal young man would display but other times they are more severe.  I would take any several kids if I could, but I also have to acknowledge that my wife would probably not be able to manage that.

Overall:

This kiddo checks many boxes for us and seems to be a good fit.  I can tell my energy level for this one is different than the others.  My wife is on board as well.  We have discussed this one with the rest of our family as far as we can.  I have a few questions waiting for answers on but if we chose to move forward than we will probably begin some video chats (pre-placements) with the kiddo to get to know him more and his care team will begin working with him to prepare for the transition.  He located on the other side of the state so in-person visit isn't quite feasible especially with COVID.  Otherwise, he would actually be able to come stay with us for a weekend or a week for pre-placement.  But there is concern of having to quarantine for everyone involved if we do that. The earliest we would have him in our home would be about 3 weeks and we would most likely have to quarantine for 2 weeks when he arrives unfortunately. If you are considering foster care, know that pre-placement is not the usual and is only possible because of him being internal with our agency.  Otherwise if he was coming from DCS it would not be possible.  The other advantage of him being internal is that we are able to access a LOT of information about him before placement.

So what what questions do we ask?  Here is the list:

1. Are there any siblings?
1. What ages?
2. Are they in custody?
3. Are they together or separate?
2. Where are they?
3. Any current medication?
1. What kind
2. For what and why?
4. Allergies to food or other?
5. Any upcomming dates?
1. Courts?
2. Therapy/counseling?
3. Physicians?
4. Visitation with Birth Family?
6. Is the Birth Family involved?
1. Who?
2. Visitation Frequency?
3. Are parental rights terminated or is reunification the goal?
7. Family History:
1. How long in the system or custody?
2. Why were they brought into custody?
3. Previous placements and what happened with each one?
8. Tell amount their behaviors:
1. Frequency
2. Intensity
3. Triggers
4. How to resolve each one
9. Are good with pets?
10. Are they good with peers and young children?
11. Can they self-entertain?
12. What level of care are they? (usually goes from 1-5)
13. Is pre-placement available?
14. What grade are they in?
15. Are they reading at their current grade level?
16. Do they have a travel pass? (allows them to cross state lines)
17. What grade?
18. How is school for them?
1. Favorite subject?
2. Worse subject?
3. IEP?
1. For what?
19. Favorite hobbies or activities?
20. Favorite foods?
21. Do they like outdoors/camping
22. Other questions that may come up during the conversation.