Step Seven: Biology Matters

We had a 10 day old baby boy placed in our home. He was labeled low legal risk and low special needs. Even so, the first goal of the State of Texas is to reunify the child with their biological family. Case Workers are required to do due diligence in searching for biological family. Both the biological mother and father expressed a desire to reclaim their child. Older biological siblings were found that were of an age to take custody. As far as we know, there was no extended family found other than the siblings.

So biology matters, it really matters when you take your child to the emergency room in the middle of the night. There is nothing more miserable than an infant with an uncontrollable fever. My personal fear is that my child will stop breathing, and our foster child gave us plenty of wheezing and scares to feed my fear. We went to the emergency room several times.

When you go to the emergency room, one of the first things they ask is family medical history. Other than the birth record, we know nothing about the family medical history. With the due diligence in locating the biological family, inquiries were made, but the biological family chose not to disclose. As a foster/adoptive parent you have nothing to help motivate the family to disclose. We tried to get a judge to require disclosure, but the best the judge could do was recommend disclosure. Thankfully, by the age of four our son had pretty much out grown the wheezing and the fevers.

So what are the biological family rights? Well, they apparently have the right to withhold family medical history. They also have at least a year to demonstrate efforts to reclaim their child. Since reunification is the ultimate goal, the State will develop a plan for the biological parents/family to fulfill. The plan includes classes and demonstration of financial responsibility as in maintaining a place to live and keeping a job. Plans vary from case to case. To keep a child in foster care and unavailable for adoption, the biological family only has to demonstrate a desire for reunification. They are never required to complete the plan. If they attend a class here and there, appear for a court date or two, they can drag the foster plan out until the child ages out at 18 years old.

In our case, both biological parents started their plans which brings us to the next step in the foster to adopt process, the hold your breath phase.