Awww

Up right now at 1:30 AM hearing Baby cough through his cold. Praying it's not bronchilitis, but I hear the phlegmy breathing.  I took it upon myself to make an ENT appointment as Baby snorts when crying/hungry and has since being placed with us.  Hard to believe he is 4 months old!

Good news! We may be finalizing and adopting Little One aka Princess in June! Thank you God. I know our time in TPR and appeals is on the low end of the average length of time for TPR case, roughly 18-24 months, we're over 11 months now.

Got to hear more this weekend with my uncle and cousin with their respective foster parent experiences.  Very different how they do things in different states, yet we try and keep the focus on how we are here to help these kiddos know there are different ways to do things and encourage good decision-making.

Have a blessed Easter season!  He is Risen!

Bringing home Baby

Sorry for the lack of posts. Baby came 2.5 weeks early in December, so visiting him in the hospital was a priority. He came home with us at a month old and is now off all medications and monitors, praise God!  Caring for a newborn is a lot of work; caring for one with a medication schedule of a dosage every 3 hours, overwhelming!

Having Baby in our home has brought a whole new experience in foster care for us.  This one is about bringing a newborn home directly from the hospital, an unknown father and special needs.

We learned of the court process.  When a baby is being placed into foster care at birth, the system finds a foster home that may also be an adoptive resource to limit the number of moves on the child to lessen the amount of trauma they will experience.  When a child is detained by CPS (Child Protective Services), an Initial Assessment (IA) worker is called to review where the child should be placed.  Within 48 business hours of detainment, the IA worker must appear before a family court judge and ask for a ChIPS (Child In need of Protective Services)  order. If that is granted, then a Family Case Worker is assigned to the child within 5 days and will visit the child in their placement home.  Depending on the age of the child, the FCW will visit the child in their foster home twice a month if under 3 and only once a month if 3 or older.  However, when you hold a current foster care license, your Licensing Specialist will come to your home within 5 days of placement and then every 3 months while you have a placement; every 6 months if no placement but current license.  I am not sure if these vary by county as this is how it is with the county our 2 kids are from.

Well, I'll stop there so I have material for another post this month, the unknown piece.

Milwaukee County Foster Care Changes Mtg 11/14/11

There is an opportunity for those of you in Southeastern Wisconsin to hear of the changes being made to Milwaukee County's foster care program effective January 1, 2012.  This meeting is being held on Monday, November 14, 6:30 PM at St. Aemilian-Lakeside/Capitol West Academy in Milwaukee. You can RSVP to Connecting Bridges.

Update

I had high hopes when I started this blog to be writing more frequently, say, bi-monthly?  So as life with a toddler goes, the time you find for yourself is little.  Make sure you have time for yourself so that you can be a better caregiver!

We have been granted TPR recently on Princess.  Most may say it was a long time coming.  Honestly, our time in the TPR process was rather short. We had 8 months from filing the petition to the motion being granted.  We are still in the appeal period, which is 30 days for Wisconsin.  If no appeals are made, we have our scheduled adoption hearing next year due to the holidays.

We also are updating our home study at this time to receive another placement.  We have been approached for one where no pre-placement visits will occur and the child will be in our home in December.  We shall see how it goes in our house as Princess has been our first and only foster care placement for over a year now.

I know we have been blessed in how our entire foster care experience has been.  I am hearing the "horror stories" and what the system needs repair with.  I am an active participant in the 2 foster care parents support groups in our area as I want to know as much as possible.  As a result of that, I am better informed of what changes will be happening in our area as of 01/01/12.  Remember, when you become a foster parent, not only are you changing someone else's life, but yours is forever changed, too. :)

Christians and Foster Care..Our Responsibility

I bet when you hear the word "missions" you immediately think overseas trip.  Would you believe that I am doing a mission right here in Wisconsin through my home, daily, as a foster parent? Missions doesn't have to happen on the other side of the world, it could be right in your home with that extra seat at the dinner table or an empty bed.  So I sat down and thought, do Christians know that we have a responsibility to take care of others without a thought?

Luke 10:27

He answered, " 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind'; and, 'Love your neighbor as yourself.'."

God has called us to love Him first, then your neighbor as yourself.  So if that neighbor is in need of someone to take care of their children and mentor them, we Christians should be the first to stand up and say, "we can help!".

Micah 6:8

He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.

This reflects to me that no matter the circumstance, we are closer to God when we do what is on His heart.

James 1:27

Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.

Children in foster care may still have their birth parents involved in their lives.  It is our job as foster parents to help them see what their best potential through God could be.

Mark 9:37

"Whoever welcomes one of these little children in my name welcomes me; and whoever welcomes me does not welcome me but the one who sent me."

Thinking back to the song, "Jesus loves the little children", just how each child matters to God!

James 1:22

Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says.

It is great to have head knowledge of the Bible, but even better to go out and be a blessing to others through serving.

Matthew 25:34-40

“Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. ³⁵ For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, ³⁶ I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’ ³⁷ “Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? ³⁸ When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? ³⁹ When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’  ⁴⁰ “The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’

We are serving God himself when we take in these children and their past.  Just think how blessed we are to have a roof over our head, running water, an abundance of food!  We need to be good stewards of these things and one way is to be a foster parent.

Proverbs 22:6

Start children off on the way they should go, and even when they are old they will not turn from it.

We can help these children learn to live a better life for when they either return home, become adopted or age out of the system.

James 2:17

In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.

This just reiterates what James 1:22 has to say.

Do you know that you may feel as though you are not impacting that child's life when they are in your home, but you really are.  They may go home or grow up somewhere else and reflect back on how they become who they are and remember you, the foster parent who taught them biblical and moral principals so that they may have eternal life with God in heaven!

All scriptures are in NIV.  The views expressed are solely my own opinions and I consulted the Bible for help. :)  Want to know more about foster parenting, contact me and I'll do my best to help!

Change of plans

We are currently in the T.P.R. phase with our placement.  Our next hearing is not for a couple of months.  "Princess" is a child we have had placement of since getting our Level 1 license just under one year ago.  This week we will have our monthly in-home visit from her OCM, Ongoing Case Manager.  Due to the age of our placement, the OCM visits her twice a month, once in the foster home and the other in her daycare/school environment.  We hope to get an update on our situation as there has been a possible change of plans. There are two ways a parent loses their rights to their biological child.  One way is involuntarily, meaning all sources to bring reunification to the child and parent have been exhausted and the home is not a safe place for the child to return to, so the court system deems the parent unfit and will terminate the rights for them.  The other way is voluntarily, where the biological parents choose to sever their rights to the child and that will allow for the child to be raised by someone else, whether a relative or an adoptive resource.  Whatever the outcome, we are blessed to have Princess in our lives and know that God always has her in His hands, just like you and me!

T.P.R.

I have been a foster parent for just under a year now and have had a foster child for the same amount of time.  Children in foster care will have an evaluation done every 6 months by the county's foster care system per A.S.F.A. law. This will determine if the child should be reunified with their birth family, live with relatives/kinship, or be placed in an adoptive home.  After 15 months in foster care, the system needs to determine which path is best for the child and proceed in that direction. One of those paths may be an adoptive home.  For that to happen, T.P.R. needs to occur.

In the foster care world, T.P.R. stands for Termination of Parental Rights.  Most of the time, it is to end the rights biological parents have to their child/children.  I can tell you first-hand it is an arduous process.  There are two phases in the T.P.R. hearing process.  The first is the fact-finding phase, a set of court hearings to make sure that all resources have been presented and exhausted for the biological parents to keep their child.  The second phase is the best-interest phase; simply put, what is the best interest for the child?  An adoptive resource would need to be identified for the child by this phase.  Adopting parent(s) are people that are willing to take the foster child as their own, legally responsible for them till 18 years of age.  The T.P.R. process is a very serious matter because we do not want to create orphans in society.  It can take months to come to a conclusion, all for the sake of the children.