Is It Too Soon to Look Through Foster Photo Listings? - Weekend Wisdom

Question: We are currently going through our home study to adopt from foster care, and I'm wondering if it is too early to look at photo listings? I have been looking at photo listings for a long time, but now, when I read the bios, it feels real, and I get slightly attached. I'm curious if you think this is setting myself up for disappointment.

Resources:

• Adoptions in the US – Our Annual Update
• Adoption Comparison Charts
• Foster Care Adoption
• Dealing with a Long Wait While Adopting
• The Impact of Fostering and Adoption on Kids Already in the Family

Transcript

Please pardon any errors, this is an automated transcript.

- Hello and welcome to Weekend Wisdom. This is a podcast created by creatingafamily
.org and I am your host, Tracy Whitney. I'm a content manager at creatingafamily .org
and I am also the new host for both of the Creating a Family podcasts.
I'm so glad that you joined me today. Weekend Wisdom is an opportunity to ask us
questions that are obstacles or concerns or challenges for you and your family,
things that might concern you about the process or about challenging behaviors or
things like that. And we want you to send us your questions so that we can come
through our archives and get some expert -based information and support for you.
We kind of put together our personal experiences as well as those expert opinions
that we've gotten from podcasts over the years. Put them all together and hopefully
we create an answer that will help you strengthen your family. So if you have
questions about any aspect of adoption foster care or kinship care which is also
called relative care giving like grandparents raising grandkids or aunts and uncles
raising nieces and nephews please send us your questions at info @creatingafamily .org
and we will do our best to create an answer that will strengthen and support you
and your family. Today's question comes from a family who is heading down the foster
to adopt path and they have a question about photo listings so let's jump into it.
So we are currently going through our home study to adopt from foster care and I'm
wondering if it's too early for me to be looking at photo listings. I have been
looking at photo listings already for a long time, but now when I read the bios of
these children, it feels really real and I'm starting to feel slightly attached. I'm
curious if you think this is setting myself up for disappointment. So Listener,
I am so on board with you about this, I understand it.
We had a similar situation when we were waiting for our second international
adoption. I was looking at the advocacy files and feeling this kind of high level
of hope and readiness that just kind of pierced my heart every time I saw one of
those faces that caught my attention. So I get it, your heart is being tugged by
these kids' stories. And it can on one hand, like I said, feel very hopeful.
And on the other hand, you're looking at the length of the process that you're in,
and it can feel frustrating. So yes, reading their bios makes this process feel
really real. And you have like this sense of urgency, when one or two kids catch
your eye, or when one story just really pierces your heart. It's natural to feel
that. It's natural to feel as if some sort of attachment is already stirring inside
of you, even if it is only through a screen. And to me, that shows that you are
ready and your heart is ready to welcome a child and you're doing the things that
are necessary to prepare yourself and your family for this big adjustment. Here's a
few thoughts that I have about the photo listings but more kind of about the
waiting game that you're in. I know this waiting period is weird and awkward and
feels on one hand like it's going to take forever and on the other hand feels like
it's flying by and you're just trying to catch your breath. So I hope that some of
these ideas that I share today kind of help you sort through the questions that you
have and kind of the things that are going on underneath that might be prompting
those questions to find the right path forward through this waiting game for your
family. So the first one is number one, please remember to be patient.
It is so hard and I understand how hard it is to wait, but it's also important to
kind of hold on to patience as a virtue that you want to maintain through this
process. When you feel anxious, it can lead to rushing and acts of desperation,
and we don't want you to say yes out of desperation or say yes to a child's file
out of anxiety. So try to just hold on to the patience. It's also really important
while you're being patient to remember to be present in your life right now, whether
that's patients with the process and present for the process, taking in all the
parts of the process and what they mean for you and for your family. But also, if
you have other children in the home already, it's really important that you maintain
an intentional presence in the everyday moments of your life right now. Maintain
routine for yourselves. Stay in touch with your friends and family. Enjoy these days,
whether you have children in the home or not already. Enjoy these days where you
have different responsibilities and activity levels and kind of like that emotional or
mental labor going on, because when you bring a child home, all of that will
change. And change is hard. change requires patience. So start training yourself now
for that patient's mentality, just kind of hanging in there and persevering. Another
thing that you can do while you're waiting is to check with your caseworker and see
what the current timelines in your state or in your county are looking like. Is
your timeline matching up with kind of the average or the typical timelines in your
county or in your state. It's pretty common for adoption from foster care to take
up to three -ish or more years from starting your home study to finalization of the
adoption. That timeline will depend on factors of the child's unique case,
factors of the child's birth parents case, whether or not the child is legally free
at placement or if they're moving quickly towards becoming legally free.
How quickly that child's case moves through the whole process is one of the big
factors that will impact how long it takes for finalization of adoption to happen.
The third thing is that your caseworker should have already been able to give you
information about how long you can expect to wait in your particular county or in
your particular state from the home study to finalization, but recognize that you
have some control over that in the fact that you can adjust your profile based on
what you think you and your partner or your spouse can handle, what kind of child
you think you can parent. So that includes age that includes special needs that the
child might have that includes learning challenges that the child might have in their
file. And so your openness of your profile will also be another factor that you can
work through with your caseworker to help determine what your timeline will be. I
know I'm saying a lot about caseworkers here, but the other thing that you can do
the next thing that you can try is to talk to your caseworker about making sure
that they're only focusing on children who are already legally free for placement,
for adoption when they are placed in your home. You're gonna have to advocate for
yourself in this area because the need for placing children in safe homes is so
significant. You're gonna have to advocate for yourself with your caseworker to just
remember, we want to only consider children who are legally free for adoption. That
means that their parental rights have already been terminated and you're going to
review those files first. Those are your priority. If your state allows it, specify
that you will only consider placement of kids with that finalization of parental
rights or that termination of parental rights. Kids that have that primary goal of
permanency through adoption. One note here that is good for you to remember is that
in many parts of the country, the language of foster to adopt is being phased out
in favor of language like pre -adoptive placement or simply adoption.
Just make sure that you're talking regularly with your caseworker about these matters
and educating yourself about your county, your state and whatever agency you might be
working with if you're also working with a private agency. If you haven't already
expanded your list of the type of child you might feel ready to parent,
you should consider that. Again, if you have a partner or a spouse, make sure
you're talking with them and you're all on the same page about this, but you need
to make sure you're being very honest and self -reflective about your strengths and
the supports that you can access, the resources you can provide, and what you feel
equipped to handle regarding age, history of behaviors, medical history,
developmental needs, learning challenges, sibling groups, or not a sibling group,
etc. All the things. A practical way to work through those questions is to have a
conversation. Again, if you have a partner or a spouse with your case worker, the
three of you together, have a conversation where your case worker might share a few
kind of anonymous cases or case examples with you to talk about how parenting the
child represented in that particular file might play out on the everyday. So it's
kind of like a role playing or a What if scenario that you're working out with
your case worker and they should feel free and you need to give them permission to
feel free to ask you hard questions about what you can handle. And so that might
help you get a better understanding of how the process works, what you can handle
and then how that impacts your timeline. Keep in mind that these photo listings are
not and not possibly be the most current representation of who is in the foster
system right now waiting for a permanent placement that moves towards adoption. So
here's what I mean. Nationally around 108 -ish thousand children in foster care are
legally free and waiting for adoption, and that's from the data of fiscal year 2022.
You can find more information about these numbers on our website and I'll link in
the show notes to help you find the right resource for that. But that means that
only a very small fraction of these kids, those 108 ,000 will ever appear on photo
listing platforms. That's well less than 5 % of all the legally free children who
are visible. So The photo listings are kind of just a skinny, skinny slice of the
pie, so to speak. It's entirely likely that the child who lands in your home that
you've said yes to will not ever have appeared on one of those state photo
listings. So hopefully that kind of makes you feel hopeful and a little less
overwhelmed by what you are seeing on the website because there's so much more,
there's so many more children available than you will ever see on a photo listing.
In the meantime, you should consider how to emotionally and practically prepare
yourself for viewing profiles that your caseworker offers you. How do you think you
would handle it? If you get a profile, you read, you say yes to the child
represented in that file, and then that match falls It's likely that you're going to
feel disappointed and so you have to figure out how to work through that
disappointment and use it as a growth point towards resilience for parenting a child
that comes to your home in the long run. If you have kids in your home already,
consider their ages, their abilities to understand the timelines and the vague concept
of this file represents a child who needs a home and the vague understanding of
timelines from here's the file that we reviewed and we think we might say yes to
this child versus that child moving into your home. The kids in your home may have
very different understandings of all of that and of the process. So work as a
family, you, your partner, your spouse, the children already in your home, work as a
family to talk through those things and kind of really put in language everyone can
understand what's happening when it's likely to happen and how the process plays out.
You should be focusing on building up your ability to process disappointment, your
resilience when you do face the disappointment and how to be patient all along the
way. These are things that you can be doing with each other to shore up each
other's ability to handle the many unknowns that happen in this process along the
way. So figure out what your boundaries are, what your parameters are,
what you can handle, and then be really clear and consistent in enforcing them.
There is a significant need for safe, stable homes for all the kids involved in the
foster system across the United States, whether they fit your profile or not. So
your caseworker may just keep presenting files to you because their need is so
great. But you should be mindful of your own boundaries in your own limits, and try
not to push yourself out of those boundaries out of a sense of desperation or
impatience. If you're kind of going outside of your boundaries, because you've
rethought your abilities and you've rethought your parameters, that's fine.
And prepare yourself well for that. Ask your caseworker to help you get educated
about that. But if you are doing it out of a sense of desperation or anxiety or
impatience, check yourself and be very cautious and very careful about that.
If the wait used to feel really long, examine those parameters again. When you find
a profile that impacts you online, feel free to reach out to your caseworker once
you've been set free to accept a placement. But remember, again,
that those profiles online are just a very small slice of the really big pie of
kids that are available to be placed in homes. Finally, do everything you can to
educate yourself and keep educating yourself. This includes keeping your home study
current. This includes keeping all of your other related documentation current, and
then educating yourself ongoing education about the needs and the parameters that
you've set for a potential profile that you could accept. Learn and keep learning.
That's kind of our motto here at creating a family, we believe that knowledge is
power, and so we want you to keep those goals ahead of yourself with patience and
flexibility and nimbleness and consistency and learning and keep learning all of those
things that we've talked about today. If you can keep these tips in mind while
you're reviewing the photo listings and you can proceed with a clear understanding of
what these photo listings mean and what your process is, then I think it's okay to
keep looking at the photo listings. I don't think it's too soon, but if you feel
like looking at these photo listings is creating anxiety or impatience or desperation,
I would encourage you to take a step back and think about the things that we've
talked about in this conversation today. Just keep working on building your readiness,
building your foundation firm and sure and strong, it is a huge leap of faith to
put yourself and your family building into the hands of the foster system, I get
that. But if you can trust the process and trust yourself and your sense of self
in the process, it will happen for you and you will be able to build your family
through adoption. In the meantime, lean into your personal strengths, your relationship
strengths, focus on realistic flexibility and working closely with your case worker to
keep yourself moving forward. You've got this, it's an exciting journey to be on.
It's a huge learning curve. And if you can remember that your home study is much
more than just paperwork, it's a foundational part of the process that helps you get
ready for whatever child eventually comes to your home, then I think you're setting
yourself up for success whether you view the photo listings regularly or not. So to
answer your question, it's not too soon if. And if you can kind of keep all those
things in mind while you're doing the viewing of the photo listings, then I think
you're probably in pretty good shape. Listeners, if you liked what you heard today
and It helped you in any way. Please leave us a rating or a review to let us
know. We do read all of your reviews. We share comments from our listeners with
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keep us all fueled for doing the work that we're doing here at Creating a Family.
We hope that you will come back next week and listen again and tell a friend about
weekend wisdom and what you've learned from listening to today's episode or any of
the previous episodes that you've heard. Thanks for joining us and have a great day.