Fostering Series: An Open Home

Once all the boxes have been checked, all the hoops dutifully jumped through, there comes a wait.

It varies for everyone, depending on your availability for number and age groups. Our family focuses on newborn/infant placements. While it hasn't been possible for us to have a large family with our fertility challenges, we're really good at the baby phase. Our lives are set up to absorb the shock really well.

I've been self-employed as a contractor for over a decade. I work for my dad and a few of his business partners. My work life is very flexible and able to hit the pause button if I need to because of other life circumstances. I can accept or decline contracts at will, sometimes I don't have much work for months at a time, sometimes I work every spare hour I can squeeze out of the nights and weekends. It's fluid. For the last decade, it's always seemed to ebb and flow perfectly with our family's financial and time needs. It's been an exercise in careful budgeting and trust in the lean times and saving and planning in the flush times.

This unusual balance allows our home to be a place that newborns can weave in pretty readily. Sometimes I'm working enough that we need a few days of daycare coverage each week, but mostly, it's okay if I can't get anything done during the day for six weeks until daycare is possible.

Many times, babies coming into the foster care system do so for a short time while extended family arrangements are ironed out. Being the stopping point on the way back to family gives everyone a little breathing room to figure out what's best.

Most times, there's a component of drug exposure with newborn placements that requires intense physical care. It's rare for a baby to be pulled from a mother's care without some kind of drug exposure because they're just starting out together, and few things can indicate such an early need for intervention, other than drug exposure (previous neglect or abuse histories with older siblings would be another reason).

Right now, our country is in the grips of an epidemic. Opiate addiction means some states have more babies with exposure history than homes to put them in. These, and other drugs, profoundly affect the neurological, digestive and nervous systems. Concerns can range from profound brain anomalies to poor circulation and food allergies.

In the case of many of these exposure borne differences, nurture changes the baby's world. Constant and vigilant services, therapy and care can make a change in the baby's ability to heal and develop that changes the trajectory of the rest of their lives.

This is why we wait for babies. Not because we think they're the cutest, or we don't want to handle other traumas, but because we've discerned this is the mission God gave us with our unique gifts. Our lives can expand to babies who only sleep 45 minutes at a time because their nervous system is so damaged. We have the resources and the support network to advocate well for early intervention therapies.

So, when we wait for a placement, our home is open a little longer than it might otherwise be, but we wait, with a certainty that God uses our gifts in perfect synchronicity with the special needs of a newborn foster placement.

Fostering Series: Licensing

The licensing process can work differently from state to state and between agencies; here's a look into our licensing experiences in 2011 and 2017.

Once we knew we wanted to pursue fostering, the next step was finding an agency. In our area, we have two private and one public agency that handle foster care. We switched agencies between license renewals to find a better fit. Here are some things you should consider when talking with agencies:

• How quickly do they respond to your questions and inquiries about fostering? Every caseworker and licensing representative I've ever met is overwhelmed with a very heavy caseload, so there's going to be a lag everywhere, but really pay attention to how well you feel heard when inquiring about foster care. 
• Ask about what resources they have to support foster parents. Do they plan monthly support and educational meetings? Do they have dedicated staff for visit transport? Will you be expected to provide all transportation? It might seem small to do a little extra driving for visits, but you have to guard your downtime against burnout, and you'll be driving to many, many doctor's appointments probably, so a support person to drive for visits is a big plus.
• Do you feel camaraderie with the workers at the agency? These are going to be your teammates, you should feel comfortable talking to them. They're going to be in and out of your house and a part of your life.

We didn't find our best fit the first time with an agency. It was manageable, but the process has been so much smoother and our comfort level so much higher being in an agency where we feel like we just fit as part of the team.

After the initial inquiries and decision to pursue our license with an agency, we moved on to basic data collection, physical check ups with a doctor and home and background checks.

The licensing process is the first step in kind of laying your whole life out in front of others. Not just the cute pictures you'd share on social media, but the details of how you were parented, how you parent, what traumas you've been through in life, all of it. In my state, there's a pretty intense questionnaire around 30 pages long that's your whole life story, your relationship with your family members, everything, put in a file for the agency's review and records.

It gets personal when you open up your life to the state and an agency.

A licensing representative walks you through the initial process, interviews you, inspects your entire home for safety concerns, talks to you about foster care and what to expect.

I remember frantically scrubbing baseboards and cabinet doors before our first licensing inspection. Seriously, my house shone like the top of the Chrysler Building. Then, the licensing rep walked through with a glance around, and I thought she didn't even notice how clean my baseboards are!!!!

After we moved houses and switched agencies, we had our new licensing rep out. I still cleaned and tidied, but I felt so much more relaxed having learned my lesson; they're not going to glove test my baseboards.

Once all the initial questionnaires, interviews and paperwork are filed, you'll need to be fingerprinted, have a physical and have a background check. Obviously fingerprints and background checks are a safety requirement you may have already considered. The physical isn't as obvious, but it's also a precaution to make sure you're in good health to provide the kind of physically demanding care of young children.

Finally, there's the training. This varies from state to state, and the requirements and methods even changed in my state between our licenses.

The first time around, we attended an in-class session of 3 hours at a time for 9 weeks. It was a great place to ask questions and really get to know the material. During our second licensing, we were part of the pilot group taking the online classes. We completed two modules a week and had the whole process completed in about 5 weeks.

While it was mostly a repeat of information for us, and the convenience of online classes really worked with my husband's work schedule, I think if it had been our first time through, being in the classroom is really where it's at. I say this as someone who designs online learning for a living, so I'd really urge you to consider the classroom if you're discerning this process.

Sitting with other foster parents helps you gain future support people, and the classes are usually led by veteran foster parents who can help answer your questions.

Once we'd completed all of our interviews, safety checks and training, one day, a paper arrived in the mail. There is was, we were an active foster home. Thus began the wait for a call.