Are you fostering only as a vessel for adoption? That sounds bad, like I'm asking if you don't care about the kids who won't need to be adopted. That isn't it. I guess I'm just curious if this is something you would still do if you thought it wouldn't ever end in growing your permanent family?
Haha, Joanna...this made me chuckle a little bit. Not because I don't take this seriously, but because I know how it feels to try and ask a blunt question in a nice way. I am not the type to be offended by much, so your questions doesn't sound bad to me. It's honest, it's what you want to know and that's why I asked!
To answer your question....No. We are not only fostering to adopt. It's hard to explain why we want to foster. I suppose I feel like it's a service I want to give to the community.
Here we are, two well educated, employed, social beings...in a house with 3 bedrooms, 1800+ sq ft. that we hardly need. It just feels selfish to think only of ourselves. I don't want to create a "family" that becomes so wrapped up in how we are some perfect unit, how "little Johnny (name is only for example's sake) takes after his daddy so much" (not that I don't want to influence our kids and teach them about all the things we love and why), because I want our kids to have their own identity. I want them to appreciate the beauty in other individuals, even if they don't look like us, talk like us, sound like us, or think like us. I want people to see us doing this {fostering} and feel that they can do it too. To work as a team with birth parents who never grew up with positive role models, to be a part of society in a positive way...God made us in his image...he didn't make me in his image and the crack addict living in the bad part of town in a different image...we're all made in his image. {And for those who are maybe rolling their eyes because I just brought God into it...I won't apologize}
Also, have you considered adoption through an agency? What made you decide to foster instead?
No, again...we aren't going into this only for adoption. Sure, I imagine that will be a positive ending to one of our placements...I imagine I'll wish every placement to end that way...but at the same time, I have to realize the benefit in rehabilitating a family unit, in being a temporary home for a child while their parents work through their struggles.
Will you foster more than one child at once?
Right now, the image in our head is of one child at a time. But, just for reference, in our county last year, 128 children entered foster care...there were only around 40 licensed foster homes. I don't know how, once we're licensed, we'll be able to turn away a child when they may be out of other options.
Once they place a child in your home, how much will you share on your blog? I would imagine there would be some limits to what you could reveal and/or feel comfortable with.
I think it's going to be a very situational/figure it out as we go kind of thing. There will be obvious things I won't post, but I imagine I'll want to talk about the experiences, the positives and negatives, and to just keep having fun with this.
For a less personal answer, our county does not currently have any guidelines for what can/can not be posted online/in social media outside of things like their name and birth family information, but a lot of other agencies and states do have policies that prohibit things like posting pictures of the child.
I think the reason I'm doing this {blogging} is so that people, who haven't ever considered fostering/don't know what's involved/think the world lacks people committed to simply doing something because it's the right thing/who are extremely judgmental but have no idea what the situation is, have a reference for considering foster care/can begin to see inside it/realize that the world is full of good people/and appreciate the beauty and diversity in life.
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