I'm headed to a foster agency open house in a couple of weeks. Hubby and I are still trying to decide if we will change agencies - and if so, which one we will go with....

Changing agencies means starting again with all the paperwork, training, inspections and homestudy. Whew! Not a decision to be made lightly.

However, our present agency is very small and doesn't offer many of the support services a larger agency would.

So, an open house at a competing agency should give me a bit of information and a chance to meet some of the staff.

To be clear - not all states have private foster agencies. Some states work through a government offices, some counties offer a mix of state and private agencies. Still, your questions should remain the same.

These are a few of the questions I plan to ask:

• 
  What type of trainings do you offer in-house?
  
  
  SPONSOR
  
  
  If I want to adopt a foster child, how do you faciliate the process?
  
  What if I want to adopt an out of county foster child? Can you help?
  
  Do you offer respite care?
  
  What about post-adoption services?
  
  Do you help facilitate open adoptions when appropriate?
  
  What type of family reunification do you support?
  
  What will be my out of pocket expenses to license with you and how much of them will be reimbursable?
  
  How many adoptions have you facilitated in the past twelve months?
  
  What age child and types of children does your agency specialize in? (Some work mostly with sibling groups, some with teenagers, some with special needs etc).
  
  Will our family be assigned a caseworker or does the caseworker change with the children? How many caseworkers do you employ?

These are only a few of the questions I plan on asking. I'll post more in the following weeks.

I hope that I'll get good answers and my choices regarding will become clearer as we walk this new decision path.