What Should I Ask for Before Finalizing a Foster Adoption? - Weekend Wisdom

Question: We’re getting close to adopting our foster child, and I keep worrying there are things we should be asking for before finalization that we don’t even know to request. What information or records should we make sure to get from the agency so we truly understand our child’s history and needs?

Resources:

• 23 Crucial Questions to Ask at Foster Care Placement Meetings
• Are You Considering Foster Care Adoption This Year?
• Adopting a Child of a Different Race or Culture

Transcript

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Tracy Whitney 0:01

Hello and welcome to Weekend Wisdom. My name is Tracy Whitney. I'm the content director for creating a family, and I'm the host of this podcast as well as our other hour-long format podcast called Creating a Family. Talk about adoption, foster care, and kinship care. And that one drops every Wednesday and is expert-based information that we learn from some of the great names in the world of adoption, foster care, and kinship care. Today's episode is our short, practical answer one question, give you a few strategies, and get you in and out real quick. So we're going to talk today about documentation necessary for adopting from foster care. The question comes from Andrea, and she says, We're getting close to adopting our foster child. I keep worrying that there are things that we should be asking for before finalization that we don't know that we should be asking for. What information or records should we make sure to get from the agency so that we truly understand our child's history and needs? And Andrea, I really appreciate you writing in and asking this question. It is a great acknowledgement of the fact that you know this child has lived a life before they came to your home. And they've had loss, they've had relationships, they've had routines, they've had a birth culture and a birth family that, you know, was familiar and normal to them and shaped who they have become thus far. Finalizing their adoption doesn't erase any of that history. And that's why I appreciate your question, because you're acknowledging that finalizing their adoption is just another step in their journey, not a clean slate starting over again. So it's really important to understand this child's context. And maybe a different way to phrase your question would be: what do we need to know to fully support this child, not just now, but long term? Because this adoption is taking place at a finite time in this child's life. And if they've been living with you as a foster child for a while, you are likely already aware of their current needs and their current abilities and their current capacities. But using information from previous documentation can help you plot a course for the long term. So as you move towards that finalization process, your role is shifting from a part of the foster team to now the long-term keeper of your child's story and all the records and documentation that goes with that. Some of the pertinent information will follow and some will not unless you ask for it. And then sometimes, to be fair, even when we ask for it, sometimes we don't get everything that we ask for regarding children's past documentations. So this stage of preparing for finalization is really about being very intentional, making sure that you're heading into this finalization with as complete a picture as you can possibly craft. So the first thing you'll want to ask for is a full case file and history. And you want to phrase it that way because you want the information to include the reasons they entered care, their placement history if you were not the only placement they experienced, any court reports or caseworker notes that are part of his file, her file, and any documentation of previous birth family visits. This gives you some, again, context, and without it, parts of your child's story may not make sense to you, and more importantly, may not make sense to them later down the road as they're digesting and processing their story. You also want to ask about any gaps in the records or any documents that you think might should be included but aren't there, and then any way to access them, how you could go about doing that. Files are very often incomplete, but knowing that they could be incomplete will help you kind of pinpoint what you think might be missing. The other thing that you want to ask for as a medical and prenatal history. So that would be gathering all of the medical information, like their birth story, you know, what was labor like, how long was mom in the hospital with the baby, how soon after birth did a placement occur, what were the developmental milestones from birth to placement, diagnoses, medications, treatments, anything that happened on the medical sphere before they came to your home. And really, if they've been with you for a while, even since they've been in your home, because you want to make sure that you have all of that information from them, even if you were tracking a lot of it yourself. And then, of course, any therapy reports, depending on the age of the child and any therapies they might have been involved with. All of your child's early life experiences, even their prenatal ones, can impact their development over time, even when you don't see it yet. And that's kind of the key question is yet. So you're gonna want to ask yourself, how do we monitor this child and what we're seeing in this medical file as they grow? What other follow-up care or evaluations are recommended? And you can kind of comb through the medical notes to help you craft the answers to those questions. The third thing you'll want to ask for is all of their educational records. If this is a school-aged child and they were in other placements and in other schools or in school when they were living with their birth family, you want to get a hold of all of that information that will be a wealth of insight for you. That includes transcripts, report cards, IEP or 504 plans, test results, evaluations that were done, notes from the teachers or other educational professionals about their learning style or their behavior in the classroom. It's really common for kids in foster care to have multiple school disruptions, meaning attending several different schools, of course, across across the course of their time in foster care. So having that full record will help you advocate well for this child once stability and permanence is in place. The fourth thing that you'll want to ask about is their mental health or behavioral history. And again, depending on the age of the child, there may be information about past and current therapy. You'll want as much information about their history of traumatic experiences as you can possibly glean. You'll want information about their behavior patterns, things that other professionals and foster care workers and social workers have noticed about their triggers or their sensitivities, strategies that have helped with those or maybe have not helped with those. I would include also questions about their sensory processing profile. Are they, do they tend towards sensory avoidance with big noises or loud talking or things like that? Or are they sensory seekers where they're just, you know, kind of all out looking for something to chew, looking for something to fidget with, looking for something to sing. And those are all some of their coping strategies that you'll want to know about. And this again will allow you to build on what you've already learned, whether the child's been in your home for a long time or not, so that you're not really starting from scratch. And again, if this child's been living with you for a while, you are not starting from scratch. Um, and I want to honor what you've done in the life of this child thus far. But Andrea, it's really important that you think about what maybe came before you that you can continue building on in healthy ways. Um, the fifth thing that you want to ask for is any insight or documentation or notes from the professionals connected to this child's file about their birth family history, their birth family culture, their birth family language, birth family religion, racial identity, cultural identity, ethnic identity, all those things that help make who that child is today. But also ask about some of their community ties. Did they have, you know, a close family friend that was involved in their story before they went into foster care? Are there traditions or routines that really mean a lot to that family that maybe you can keep honoring and keep respecting and exposing the child to as they're growing and processing their story? They're all a part of your child's identity and they don't end with adoption into another family. You just have to figure out how to incorporate them into your current family and expand your family's sense of identity in that way. The sixth thing that you'll want to ask for coming up to finalization is the personal history and lifebook materials that might have been gathered by either previous foster parents or by scrapbooks by the birth mom or birth grandparent or somebody like that who may have been collecting things like photos, letters, schoolwork, artwork, personal items that mean something to the child or to the child's family, and the names of important people in that child's life. Again, there could be like a sweet little old lady in the neighborhood that just was always looking out for this child before he or she went into foster care. And you want to know about that. You want to know what impact those people had on this child's life. If a lifebook exists, ask for it. If it doesn't, collect everything that you can and go ahead and start one. It can be a really valuable tool for helping this child understand who they are, where they came from, what their journey was like. And it gives them kind of that visual and the timeline to help them make sense of it as they learn and grow in their understanding of their story. These pieces will matter more to them over time than they maybe do right now, especially if this child is pretty young. But it's really important that you kind of see yourself as the keeper of that information so that you are not keeping it from them, but you're keeping it safe with them and helping them access it whenever they want or need to. In closing, the goal of this chapter of your family's life is to gather as much accurate information as you possibly can about this child so that you can support their physical, mental, emotional, social, spiritual health in their process of understanding their own story. You don't have to do it alone. You can be accessing your caseworker, your agency, your attorney, any of the professionals involved in this child's case to help you build this information. And if you take the time now to gather all of this information, you get the opportunity to build a nice strong foundation for all the things that come next, including really big questions about who am I and where did I come from and you know why did I enter the foster system and why did I need to be adopted? Your ability to answer those questions will be greatly enhanced by the depth and breadth of information that you can gather before finalization. Andrea, I want to say again, thank you for asking this question. It's such an important question for building our kids' identity and supporting our kids' identity. And I really appreciate that you are thoughtfully approaching this next step in your family's journey. So, congratulations on the upcoming finalization. Thank you for asking this question. And listeners, if this question resonated with you and the information that I shared resonated with you, we would love it if you would drop us some fan mail. You can do that in the link in your podcast player. There's a link in the show notes on YouTube. Wherever you're catching this episode, you can find the link that says drop us some fan mail. We would love to hear what questions this might have spurred for you. We would love to hear other questions that you have about raising your adoptive, foster, or kinship impacted family. And until next week, I hope you all have a good one. Take care.