Step Six: Placement

Placement is such a joyous time. The excitement of the placement of an adopted child is just as exciting as the birth of a new baby, but unfortunately, this joy has some strings attached. 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. We had placement. We had joy. We held our breath.

Once you have placement you then start the paper work, the interviews and the court dates. Every thing a placed child does in your home has to be documented. There are forms for taking him to the doctor. There are forms to chart every bit of medicine including saline solution and baby aspirin. There are forms to fill out if you want to travel and stay overnight somewhere other than your home (weekend trips, vacations,…). There are forms to fill out if you want to leave your child with a babysitter or family member. You don’t just fill the forms out, you have to submit them and some require prior approval before you can go forward (trips and babysitters). If you intend to take the child out of state for a vacation, not only does it need to be submitted and approved, it has to go before a court judge.

I don’t understand the reports of children that are neglected in foster care. Every quarter we had a packet we had to fill out regarding the development of the baby. We submitted, and it was reviewed. We had people calling us when they saw in the packet that the baby was not doing whatever it was supposed to be doing (rolling over, feeding itself…). We had people in our home doing evaluations and tests with the baby to check his development. The child’s State assigned Case Worker was required to visit the child at least once a month to physically evaluate the child’s home environment, health and safety of the child, and evaluate the foster parents. Granted our Case Worker would get overloaded. Sometime we just had a quick phone interview of us, but the case worker did go to the baby’s day care for a physical evaluation of the health of the baby. In addition to forms and Case Worker interviews, there were quarterly court dates. Quarterly a judge reviewed all the paper work and had the Case Worker say under oath that they had physically seen the child and the child was in good care. The judge also looked at reunification and what the biological family was doing, but that is a story for another time.

We filled out forms, made ourselves, our home, our family available for interviews and evaluations, and we appeared in court. We documented. IMPORTANT TIP: don’t just document by filling out forms, TAKE PICTURES. Take lots of pictures and submit them. The judge will look at the pictures. The lawyers will look at the pictures. If the biological family is involved, they will look at the pictures. Pictures demonstrate a snap shot of health and happiness. As a foster parent, as a potential adoptive parent, you want to demonstrate that you will provide a healthy environment and happy, loving environment.

Placement is just one of many steps on this journey. Keep holding your breath, next biology matters.