Question: Hubby and I are finally ready to take the plunge and become foster parents. We wanted to wait until our youngest was in high school. We’ve started listening to your podcast, and you’ve mentioned on several of the shows that we would likely have a choice between the local county child welfare agency and a private agency. Which should we choose?
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Welcome back everybody to Weekend Wisdom by Creating a Family. Weekend Wisdom is our time to answer your questions, so send us some questions.
You can send your questions to info @creatingafamily .org. We answer your questions in our Weekend Wisdom podcast, which drops on Sunday.
So I'm going to jump right in. Here is today's question. Hubby and I are finally ready to answer your questions. to take the plunge and become foster parents. We wanted to wait until our youngest was in high school.
We've started listening to your podcast and you've mentioned on several of the shows that we would likely have a choice between the local county child welfare agency and a private agency.
Which one is best? Which one should we choose? Great question. And you're right that you have heard me say that in most states, you will have... the option to use either the public child welfare agency or a private agency that has a contract with the state.
Some states differ but most allow this and the public agencies are called different things in different states. It can be called DSS,
Department of Social Services or Department of Children's Services or Department of Family Protective Services. et cetera, et cetera. So that will depend on what state you are in. That's for public agencies.
Private agencies also obviously go by different names, and they can be for -profit or not -for -profit. And only those private agencies that have a contract with the state to license foster parents should you consider,
obviously. The truth is, I can't tell you which one is better for you, or even which one is always better for anyone, because obviously, each public agency differs,
and each private agency differs, and also, your priorities may differ. That's what you are looking for. But what I can do is give you some factors to consider. First of all,
cost. Becoming licensed with a public agency is always free. With private agencies, the cost can be either public or private. free to become licensed or it's going to be relatively low cost.
But it may cost you more. You would need to check in your state. Training, both public and private child welfare agencies require training for foster parents.
Usually they use the same curriculum, but in some states, the states allow private agencies to come up with their own curriculum. The topics-- topics covered are usually very similar,
and some states which don't specify a curriculum do specify what topics have to be covered. One of the big differences you might find is the convenience of the trainings, which is important because the trainings are usually somewhere in the range of 30 -35 hours,
so having it be convenient is an important thing. So you would need to check with both the private and the public agencies to find out what their training training schedule is. Another thing to consider is their post placement support.
In my opinion, this is the most important thing to consider, but also one of the harder ones to figure out and get opinions on and understand because everybody's going to say that they're going to give you good post placement support,
but not all agencies actually are. How do you know? How do you figure out? out which agency you should go with? Well, one, if you can find local foster parents through a support group,
either online or in person, ask them, which ones have you used? Have you been pleased? It's been my experience that foster parents are very forthcoming about the strengths and weaknesses of their agencies.
So that's your very best place to get information. Another thing to do is to... to attend informational meetings for each, the public and the private foster care licensing agencies.
Every public and private agency should have informational meetings. So call, find out when they are and go to them. Ask questions about training and also ask questions about if I have to miss a training,
what are my options for making up that session? So those are two questions you need to ask. Also, ask how long they had been licensing foster families. The longer they've been doing it gives you some idea of stability.
Do they use the same training as the state is the question to ask the private agencies? And for either of them, ask what training they use. Their trainings have names and you'll get to recognize them.
The two big ones are MAP, M -A -P -P, and Pride, P -R -I -D -E. Then the question that gets to the post post placement support, and this is the hardest one to figure out, but a good question to ask is,
what happens if we run into problems on a Saturday night? Who do we call? What is their response rate? Are they required to answer our call immediately? Or is there somebody on call who in case of emergency would be there for us?
This is not a foolproof list, but it will get you started and it does at least give you ideas of what we do. we think is important. I hope this is helpful for you. Remember,
send us your questions at info @creatingathamily .org. Before you leave, check out our free courses that we offer on our website through the support of the Jockey Being Family Foundation.
They are terrific courses. They can count as foster parent continuing ed. You have to check with your licensing agency, but we've never heard of one who doesn't accept it. They're on a variety of topics,
but all the topics will be helpful for you if you are considering being a foster parent. Thanks for joining us today for Weekend Wisdom. Send us your questions at info @creatingafamily .org,
and please, please, please tell a friend about this podcast. They can subscribe anywhere they subscribe to podcasts. podcasts or where they listen to podcasts. You would type in "creating a family" and the weekend wisdom is a part of that podcast.
See you next week.