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.

Wow.

A dear friend of mine lost her 2 year old daughter suddenly.  She was a playmate to my foster daughter ever since I got Little One almost a year ago.  I knew of "R" when her mama and daddy first learned about her and flew to where she was almost 3 years ago.  She truly was placed in this family by God.  "R" was a sweet child with special needs and she made an impact on me!  I will miss her and remember her next week when she would have had her 3rd birthday here on earth.  Instead, she is having the best birthday party anyone could have, one with Jesus.