There are more than 4,000 children currently in foster care in Virginia. Of those, approximately 700 are legally available to be adopted, waiting for a family like yours to provide them with a forever family. Fostering and adopting a child can be rewarding. If you’ve been considering this step, it’s important to assess your readiness through a local department of social services and understand the level of commitment and effort it takes to care for a child or a teen who has been separated from his or her birth parents and biological family. Reading and discussing this information might help you determine whether fostering a child is right for your family.
1. Are you ready to make the commitment?
Raising a child in the foster care system is a huge decision. You must be prepared to love and accept someone into your home entirely and be ready to say goodbye when they return to live with their birth or kinship family. This is because foster care is designed to be a temporary solution when children are removed from their homes due to various circumstances. When a child is placed in foster care, reunification is the primary goal. Placement with relatives is the subsequent goal. Local departments of social services engage birth families and kinship supports and develop a plan to achieve the primary or secondary goal.
Unfortunately, not every child or teenager in foster care can be reunited with his or her parents. When the primary or secondary goal cannot be achieved, adoption is the last option. Children who can’t be returned to their birth parents or placed with relatives may be eligible for adoption.
In order for a child to be legally free for adoption, a child must have an approved goal of adoption and parental rights of the birth parents must be terminated. In Virginia, children remain in foster care until a final order of adoption is ordered by the circuit court.
That said, more than eighty percent of children and youth in foster care in Virginia are adopted by their foster parents. If a family is interested and considered for placement of a child in foster care and they are not their current foster family, they must have an approved home study with a certification to foster and adopt. At a minimum, a child has to be placed with a family as a foster/prospective adoptive parent for six months before the adoption finalization process begins. This requires a child-specific home study or home study addendum approval from a local department of social services.
Right now in Virginia, adoptive families are needed to adopt teenagers ranging from fourteen to seventeen years of age. Many of these children live with significant challenges.
2. Do you have a support system in place?
It takes a village to raise a child. When you foster and adopt children, you will work with many professionals, including social workers, therapists, and medical personnel, who can help support the child’s needs. Adoptive parents need to be willing to work with a team in the child’s best interest.
While these professionals are a great help, you will need a support system to help you navigate caring for a child who has experienced trauma. This support system may include relatives, friends, neighbors, or groups to which you belong. Like any family, there may be times when you need an extra hand to pick up your child from a therapy appointment or to help cook when you get sick. Or you just need someone to talk to who can help you manage your stress.
3. Can you meet the demands of foster parenting and adoption?
Parenting a child or teenager in foster care can be physically and emotionally demanding. Children in foster care are healing from past experiences, and you must make special considerations. Integrating trauma-informed parenting into your natural routine will help you reach the child in a way that makes him feel stable, safe, and loved. You will learn these strategies in required pre-service training for foster care.
4. How will your children respond?
Fostering and adoption will impact your biological children as they adjust to the new family dynamic. They may have to share bedrooms, bathrooms, and your time and attention. It can also be quite a shock to your children to have a new kid in your home who has court dates and medical appointments, biological family visitations, and may even have special challenges. This further divided attention can be challenging for everyone in the home. Even the humblest children can get jealous when sharing their mom or dad.
5. How are your communication skills?
When you foster and adopt a child or teenager, you’ll deal with many people, including the child’s care team and ideally, their biological and extended family. It is best for adopted children and teenagers to remain connected with their own culture and family to help instill a sense of identity and belonging. As you navigate building a connection with your child’s biological relatives, you’ll need to practice good communication and a positive attitude toward people who may be different than you or who are managing challenges you haven’t encountered in your own life.
Many families have positive experiences with foster care and adoption. These families go into it with their eyes wide open. It’s important to understand that what you’re doing is vital for these children and teenagers. Every child deserves a safe, stable, and loving home. Foster and adoptive parents open their hearts to children and commit to supporting them throughout their lives.
Fostering a child or a teenager is the first step to adoption in Virginia. While adopting from foster care isn’t easy, adoptive parents are not left to navigate these waters on their own. If you decide to pursue foster care and adoption, you’ll receive training to handle the parenting of children with behavioral and physical challenges, and you’ll meet professionals who can guide you as you care for children or teenagers in foster care who need a stable family to grow and thrive.
To learn more about the children and teens available for foster care and adoption, go to AdoptVA.com.
