Naomi, a foster – adopt mom (and the Jewish blogger on adoption.com), has been wanting to adopt again from foster care.

She has one success story, having adopted her young daughter from foster care a few years ago. She’s also had a few false starts.

That’s normal when adopting from foster care. You probably will have false starts trying to adopt. Your children will go home sometimes. (unless you are adopting a waiting child – another type of foster adoption)

The first goal of foster care is to reunite with bio-family when appropriate and if you live in a Family to Family county, you’ll be working with the reunification plan.

What are Naomi’s chances of adopting this cute little boy? Well, it depends upon so many factors – family history, drug use, abuse issues, and she’ doesn’t even know yet what those issues might be yet.

Caseworkers often think a child might be adoptable and then a grandmother enters the picture, or the bio mom gets ninety days drug free and the judge sends the child home.

That’s a good thing right?


Depends upon which side of the fence you sit, but usually, sending a child home is a good thing.

Reunification whenever possible.

That's the mantra you have to chant as a foster parent - even if you want to adopt.


And that’s the hard part of being a fost-adopt parent.

Naomi is hopeful though:

We aren't getting our hopes up about adopting him until I get more details on his case, but it looks like it should be going in that direction.

I’ll be reading her story and you can read it here.


And in case you don’t know, here are a few basics of Family to Family:

To reunify children with their families as soon as that can safely be accomplished, based on the family's and children's needs -- not simply the system's time frames.


To reduce the lengths of stay of children in out-of-home care.


To better screen children being considered for removal from home, and to determine what services might be provided to safely preserve the family.


To decrease the overall number of children coming into out-of-home care.

For more information about reunification, visit the Casey foundation (Family to Family initiative) web site: