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.
