Legal Risk Children

What is a legal risk child? This is a child who is in foster care currently and the goal is adoption, but the parental rights have not been terminated yet. In some states all children available for adoption are considered legal risk. They do not terminate the parental rights on a child until an adoptive home has been found. In other states the parental rights are terminated whether there is a pre-adoptive placement available or not. What does this mean to adoptive parents? It means that there is a chance, or a risk, that the parental rights will not be terminated and the child could return to the parents. Usually a caseworker will not search for a pre-adoptive placement until they are certain… [more]

Occasionally, a hoped-for, planned-for adoption doesn’t go through. Perhaps the parents changed their mind and parented their child; perhaps the child went to relatives. In foster adoption, the child may have been reunited with the biological family. Whatever the case, and even when you know the placement was not a sure thing, it can cause heartache and disappointment for you and your family. Steps: 1. Allow yourself to grieve your loss. 2. Don’t be afraid to cry. 3. Treat yourself to some extra pampering. Consider massage, long walks or reading. 4. If you have other children, talk with them openly and allow them to express their feelings. If the child was already placed in your home, this will affect them as well. 5. Get counseling for yourself and your family if you… [more]

The morning of Mackenzie’s first birthday party, a social worker showed up at our home, and announced that we were being investigated for child abuse. It rocked us to our very core. To make a very long and ugly story short, we were cleared, but because only Sammy was legally adopted, we lost custody of our other two kids. After we lost the kids, Sammy began a very horrible downward spiral. Another trauma had been added to his life, and yet another loss. His anger increased, and the level of violence was out of control. We tried anger management classes, and counseling, and the usual thing that parents go through. Out of desperation, I called the kids social… [more]

My friend Mike has an interesting post over on the Adoption.com forums. He provides a little reflection on how and why he got started in foster care. I think it’s a wonderful post, and probably reflects the feelings of many of us. Post your story on the forum. Be warned, Mike has a, ummmm, interesting sense of humor. My husband and I have always wanted children. Not having them was never an option for us. We had been through several rounds of infertility treatments, with no success. Daily shots, every other day trips to the specialist, taking temperatures, all the usual stuff that couples go through. One month, all conditions looked perfect, and yet, the results were heartbreaking. Further… [more]

Adoption.com's magazine, Adoption week emagazine came out today. Every week I scan to read articles, blogs and even adoption related humor. This week, an article written by a fost-adopt mom caught my eye. She relates how her now adopted and grown children, went back and forth to bio dad and her, foster mom, before she was able to adopt the children. She also writes about the special needs her children have because of the very bad start to their lives. Mom, Cheryl Jones writes about adopting her children: My husband and I were foster parents of our adopted son and daughter for eight years before we finally got to adopt them. After being ours already in our hearts, they became legally ours in July of 2000. During… [more]

Foster adoption works differently from state to state and even from county to county. Where I live, all children under five are placed directly into foster-adopt homes. If parental rights are terminated, the child can be adopted by the foster family. I talked about this process in my post on Family to Family. The downside to this procedure is the heartbreak for the foster-adopt family when a child goes home to birth family. I've also explored this in my series of blogs about Rick my foster child, who went home. Going through this process several times has caused me to be humble and thankful. It forces me to stay focused on the kids and not my own needs and wishes - even… [more]

Another foster adopt mom and I had a conversation last week which is still infuriating me. I have to get this off my chest. This excited prospective adoptive mom was upset because of a visit with her prospective adoptive baby’s birth-mom. For those of you who don’t know this process, if you foster adopt a child, there may still be visits with the birth-mom while an effort to reconcile with birth-family is made. If reconciliation, or reunification, isn’t successful, parental rights are terminated and the child is free for adoption. Anyway, my friend went to give her child over to the birth-mom for a visit. When she went to pick her up an hour later the child was in a new outfit that bmom had brought for baby… [more]