Further explanations

The first plan in Washington Foster Care is to reunite but there is always plan B and plan C in the works at the same time which do NOT include uniting.

It is like walking a tight rope, to use a cliche, because we have to support the reunification plan wholeheartedly and in our heart of hearts everyone knows that Charley and I became Foster/Adopt Parents. We are looking for our forever family, not just fostering, so it is hard to support the plan but I try to with all my heart. I work at the bugs in my dreams. My husband struggles too.

I agree with Lisa that returning is not always the best plan, Washington also has LAWS on the books about safety for kids to return home written because some children who were in Foster care were returned to their birth families and then killed by those parents or by the boyfriends or girlfriends of those parents. A real static is that many kids end up in Foster care because of drug using parents and in Washington state the drug of choice is meth, meth users make bad life choices. Washington also keeps the kids in care for a very short time period before severing parental rights, only two years. So a six year old that goes into care and whose parents fail, is available to adopt by the time he or she is eight in this state. That way the kids have a permanency plan quickly and can move into a normal life as soon as possible. That gives the parents two years to get their acts together before the state makes them give them up.


Lisa brought up some excellent points in her response to my entry and the most important one is that sometimes going home isn't the best plan for the kids. Lisa one of my promises is that I don't talk specifically about my kids but actually in general terms so as to keep their privacy. More like Peter Pan and really I talk about my feelings on Fostering as a whole.

When we first were approached with letting the families have contact, once the state cleared them, we were so resistant because we were selfishly thinking about our own discomfort. And it is a bit awkward at first to meet people to whom these kids belong but for them to see their kids being taken care of and loved helps heal the ADULTS hearts. I am not talking about the parents here but extended family members like Aunts, Uncles, cousins, Grandmas, Grandpas. Washington still has parental visits done at state supervised facilities with skilled social workers present to evaluate the whole process. Foster Parents do not take the kids to those visits and rarely, if ever meet the birth parents.

Lisa was also right that the round table approach works best, in our state it is called Family to Family and all the people involved in the case meet to discuss the kids and how they are doing. Ideally the kids are the focus of everything as they should be. What makes me really mad is when I think that people are fostering for supplemental income and not doing it for the kids. It makes me ill.







Anyways.....I miss you folks. Happy Sunday.