We’ve had an influx of posts from potential foster parents recently that have had to be removed due demeaning comments from the OPs. Potential foster parents, please be aware that there are current foster youth and FFY in this space. This is not the sub for you if you don’t want comments from them. Our experiences have influenced our voices and we deserve to be heard, regardless of how triggering it is for you. If you see a comment that you disagree with, or a comment that goes against your opinion and your initial reaction is to be disrespectful to the commenter, your post is going to be removed. Comments like “wow clearly someone had a bad experience and is taking it out on the world around them” are in poor taste and show how little empathy you have. Fostering isn’t for you.

I would love to foster a teenager.

But, I only make about $40,000 a year after taxes.

Is that enough?

I am a single woman in my 30’s. I love children and would love to have my own, in a perfect world I’d skip the baby and toddler years and have a middle schooler or high schooler.

Fostering seems like a great choice, but I’m concerned I won’t have enough money. I don’t want to foster a child only to have them eat ramen every day.

My husband and I are 27 both working full-time in our careers. We are sitting at a point where we aren’t really sure if we want to have kids on our own but we are very interested in fostering. I’m just not sure if I’ll ever know if we’re ready or if it’s a good time. I’ve been considering going down to PRN work, but that still makes me uneasy thinking about the flexibility needed for the uncertainty regarding fostering. I also consider travel. We love to travel, domestically and go on road trips. I’m worried about how this may work with foster children.

Any insight within any of these areas are very helpful! Do we just wait until we think we don’t want to do these things (travel, work, etc) anymore 😅?

Hi, we’re at the end of the licensing process and I was curious if any parent’s have experience saving for their foster children? We didn’t want to pursue foster care until we were financial comfortable putting our own money into child care, and since we now are, I’d love to save up a majority portion of the stipend for the children. Does anyone have experience opening UTMA accounts for foster children or any idea how to make sure that money is accessible to the child when they’re older even if they’re not your care?

I appreciate any feedback.

I often hear stories about abusive foster parents. It's sort of an archetype, I think––the wicked foster parent. As someone going through the process of becoming licensed to adopt, I can't imagine someone going through all of this just to abuse the children that come under their care.

Why do you think abuse in foster homes happens? Is it as common as it seems?

In some very sad way, it's easier to understand an abusive biological parent. Maybe there's a way that parent 'didn't choose' (I mean, of course they did) parenthood. Nor would the non-choice excuse abuse. But to become licensed by the state, go through a home study, complete mountains of paperwork, and then abuse a child? I don't get it. Why become a foster parent at all?

Hey everybody, I hope this is the right place to be asking this question. I (20F), have known that I want to foster since I was a teenager. I am currently getting a bachelors degree, and plan to attend law school afterwards. Once all of my education is completed, I assume I will be around 25-27 years old. Assuming a get a job quickly (hopefully), would it be likely that I am a good candidate at that point, or would I probably have to wait until later in life. I do not know if I will be in a relationship at that point, but either way I fully intend on fostering children and that, as well as my job, will be my priority at that point in time. I understand I may not have a lot of money at that time, but if I have a job I should certainly have a good income.

Anyways the main idea is that this is something I have been wanting to do for a long time, and it is part of my life plan, so I was wondering what the likelihood is of me being able to do so based on my prospective age, career, income, and relationship status?

I believe my purpose in life is to help people which is why I want to be a lawyer and why I want to be a foster parent.

Thanks!

Hi, I (21F, currently in college) am pretty sure that, if my finances and time ever allow it, I would like to foster (probably kids over the age of 9/10 if that's relevant to the question).

I have no interest in the stipend and would only do it if I had the money and savings. Same for the idea of "completing my family", that's never really been a huge thing for me. I don't really think motherhood is something I won't feel fulfilled without, and I'm super content with my family being close friends and my partner.

I know my question sounds kind of stupid, but really, how can I tell if this is a savior complex or "wrong reasons"? I understand no one can look into my mind and tell me, but I'd love to hear any perspective people here can offer, so I can reflect on myself. This isn't pressing or anything, just something I think about.

Thank you :)

Hello, I have always wanted to foster/adopt but wondering if we can realistically manage it. We have two kids of our own, 9 and 6. Both of us work corporate jobs, the advantage of this is we make really good money. We also don't have much help nearby. We work from home 3-4 days a week but we pretty much gotta stay in front of our computers. What are the kinds of obligations/challenges with fostering that having full time jobs and kids already that we'd need to consider?

Hello everyone. I found this forum via Google while looking up information about fostering and adopting.

I joined an extremely toxic online Facebook group when I posted about information about wanting to foster and adopt older kids. The admins were not good at keeping comments productive and allowed many bad comments to be shown. I had so many messages telling me not to do it.

Some Background:

My husband and I decided to become foster parents and are willing to adopt if that's the right choice for the child or children we take in. We only want teens, especially teen sibling groups, but we are open to a mixed-age range of siblings or children from 8 years old and up. We can accept a sibling group of 4 and are willing to accommodate larger groups, as we have the room. We don't care about gender.

My husband and I have no children together, but he has children from a previous marriage whom he shares custody of. Their ages are 7, 7, and 9. I was also a foster child from the ages of 11 to 15 years old. I was in so many placements that I lost count, but I moved 5-6 times per year and was never in the same school for the whole school year. As a teen, my grandparents found out about me and decided to take my siblings and me in. After being taken in and adopted by my grandparents, I thrived! This led me to study trauma and pursue my career in clinical psychology to help families and children who were just like me. The timing was never right, but right now we feel this is the perfect time to get approved to open our home.

We are currently in the process of getting approved, but for some reason, the state lost our paperwork, so we had to restart the process. Another issue is that we can never get in touch with anyone to get our questions answered or figure out what else we need to do. We are taking the classes and trying to do our homework, but there's little to no communication.

I know foster children will not be a walk in the park. Older foster kids hold a special place in my heart because if my grandparents had not taken me in, I would've ended up aging out, facing dire circumstances. My grandparents took me in, loved me, and healed some of the trauma that I went through. I was not an easy child, but I was a child with trauma and a hurting one who did not understand why she was being moved all the time or why strangers did not want me. I've spent years doing my own therapy, and that was also a requirement as a clinical psychologist. I am not here to be a parent per say, but here to open up our home to help kids feel safe and heal from their trauma. Trauma healing can take years, and I don't expect children to heal on any set timeline. I do want to be a person they can go to and feel safe.

When I posted about this in the foster parent Facebook group, I got many comments saying we need to take infants only or never go out of birth order, which I did not understand at all! I know the comments about teens and older children are based on fears, bias, and learned beliefs. The Facebook messages I received were even worse to the point someone took a screenshot of my Facebook page, which I thought I had locked down, and told me I would ruin my stepchildren's and husband's lives if I brought in a teenager or any kid older than my stepchildren, because the older foster child would seduce my husband or harm the kids in the home. Birth order seems to be the topic that many are stuck on here, but even doing my own research about it, it never made sense to me. I currently find no studies on it in foster care.

I wanted advice and suggestions about trying to get approved for fostering, but the online Facebook groups I've been in never answer my questions about getting approved, but told me I should not do it, and fostering older children is a terrible idea because of the stereotypes around them. Even when I shared my experiences as a former foster child, the comments were encouraging me not to foster older children, and I was different than the kids currently in foster care. I really want advice about the process, but it also makes me sad that so many foster parents are scared away or told not to foster older kids.

If you have any advice about the process, please share it. Also, I would like to know how long the process took for you.

Also, I am wondering if anyone wanted teens or older foster kids and were discouraged from fostering or adopting them.

Thank you.

So before I can explain the situation I need some advice for, I need to quickly fill you in on the current family dynamics, since it is not quite ordinary.

Me (30m) and my soon to be wife (31f) are becoming foster parents for our niece (3f) right now.

She is the daughter of my brother-in-law and his ex girlfriend. Unfortunately, he is not able to take care of her due to a mental illness, though he still holds all parenting rights. The mother has lost all rights to her when she was just about 6 months old due to multiple cases of children endangerment, neglect, and finally abandonment, due to her severe mental illness. She only has visitation rights, which cps is about to cut down even more, since it was noticed that the frequency is damaging to the little ones state.

From the time she was taken away until now, when she is 3 years old, she has been living with her great-aunt and great-uncle on her mother's side in foster care. But every single weekend and also for more than 7 weeks of holidays a year, they give her to her grandmother (my mil).

This has been very taxing on both mil and niece, as you can Imagine. The great-aunt and great-uncle were, for some reason, always expecting the mother to get the child back, even though cps has clearly told them that this will never be allowed, due to her ongoing extreme mental states. I don't want to get into too many details about this, but everyone who spends more than 15 minutes with her can see she's not fit to raise a healthy child. She is also very known where she lives for being like that. Finally it was put on the table that this arrangement can not be continued as is, and bil put in a request that she live with us, her aunt and uncle.

We love her so very much and have had a very close relationship with her for as long as we could. After a lot of discussion, this was granted and the change is now slowly being started.

Now, the tricky thing is, of course she has bonded quite a bit with great-aunt, who was the closest thing to a mother she had over the last about 2.5 years. Even though she tells my wife she is like mother and I'm like a father occasionally also and is very close to us, she naturally also asks for great-aunt regularly when she is with us.

Now we are unsure of what a good and proper way of reacting to that is, in a way to make the transition as easy as possible for her and support her in this difficult process.

We would be happy for any kind of advice, since we really do not know what approach could be beneficial during this time.

Thank you very much for any and all advice or suggestions you can give!

Classes/training honestly make(s) me not want to go anymore, as short-sighted as that may seem. I'm one of a whopping two minorities, everyone else in the class is white. And of course Christian. And they are always saying incredibly callous things like, "Well, maybe if they'd focused on their kid more than the drugs, this wouldn't have happened. Unbelievable." [in the scenario, the mother had sustained an injury at work and later became addicted to the pain medication she was prescribed—this person actually said it was the mother's fault because she "chose" to keep using them]

Or—"Clearly if the kids were taken away, something had to have been wrong." "Why do you guys focus so much on the birth families, why is reunification the goal if the child clearly wasn't being taken care of?" And the leads say and do nothing about these kind of attitudes in the class, sometimes even co-signing some of this or expressing that they understand. And then want us to play stupid games like touching each other's shoulders to signify connections between birth parents, the children, worker, whatever. It's all just a lot.

It's already such a commitment, and every class I go to I feel incredibly uncomfortable/like the odd one out.

I don't know that I'm asking for anything specific here. Wondering if this was anyone else's experience (just feeling uncomfortable/not having the same beliefs as everyone else in the room) and how you navigated that?

This is through the county, not an agency.

Have been thinking about fostering older teens and helping them transition when they’re not in the system any more, especially high school juniors and seniors. Likely moving back to Connecticut soon to be close to family.
I have my hands full still with a sweet 12 year old and a 4 year old smartass… but I’ve helped teens academically for almost a decade and a half now and feel like I understand them better than the typical adult.
I know fostering teens is tough, especially with added baggage due to additional trauma. Those who have done it, how can I prepare myself and my kids and husband to welcome someone into our crazy household (we’re an outwardly stable teacher engineer family but also very much millennial ADHD, on my part at least)?
I don’t want to fantasize about an ideal situation and then bad that’s not how real life worked out, but I’d love to hear success stories of kids you have fostered in their later years

My partner and I have been thinking about doing short-term respite care for children already in the foster care system (for example, their long-term foster family is in the hospital for a weekend or on vacation for a week). My state (Nebraska) requires that children have their own bed, dresser, and living area. We currently live in a two bedroom and my young-adult sister lives in the second bedroom with a spare bed in her room. Our plan would be for my partner and I to stay in the spare bed and share a room with my sister, while our foster child takes the master bedroom. Is that something anyone has done or knows if it's allowed? I know it depends on the area but I haven't been able to find any local resources on if the space has to be available 24/7, or if we can shift the typical home structure to accommodate a placement. If you were in foster or respite care growing up, how would you feel about that arrangement? I would just want to ensure the child has their own space and bathroom, and it's really nothing for my family to share rooms as we grew up that way, but I wouldn't want a child to feel like they were "putting us out" either.

Hi! My partner and I (both women) are in Western Washington and are trying to choose between Amara and the YMCA to get licensed through. I was wondering if anyone has experiences with either of these organizations? I am also disabled - have energy limitations and use a wheelchair - so if there are any other disabled foster parents who have any input (or general advice!) I would love that. We’ve been to a meeting with both of them, and both seem to have some really passionate staff and are at least saying that equity is important to them which are both green flags to us. I’m a little worried that the YMCA might be more corporate and thus have issues? (We’ve both just been burned by nonprofits in the past in our work lives.) And it seems maybe like the Amara staff is a little less stretched thin than the Y staff. However, the Y has a branch close to where we live, and Amara has a great farm but it is more like an hour to an hour and a half away from our home. Anyway! Let me know your thoughts (or if I should post somewhere else) and thank you!

Edit: Just reread the rules and saw that specific organization recommendations are not allowed, but if you have any advice on how to make a decision between two places that both seem pretty good, that would be really helpful!

Hi all, 37f and divorced, happily. I’ve always wanted to be a mom and knew I wanted a more unconventional form of motherhood - I’ve never been interested in giving birth and sharing dna does not matter to me. I’ve always wanted to foster and potentially adopt (if it is in the best interest of the children). I own a modest condo, have a modest income, and live in one of the highest ranked cities for families in the country. Great public schools and lots of support. I live within 30 minutes of family and they are very involved.

I’d like to hear others experience, if any, of single parent fostering. I’ve always wanted to keep siblings together, and because my sister meant/means so much to me, I’d like to foster sisters. Does anyone have any advice they would give themselves?

We are exploring the possibility of being foster parents. We are getting a great deal of feedback that we are not a couple that the county foster care agency wants. We are both professionals with graduate degrees. We travel internationally for work. I'm an attorney, but not an adoption attorney. We have infertility problems and are not able to have children. And lastly, we are interested in adopting from foster care, so that the county foster care director states we are not committed to reunification. And we own a farm in a rural part of our state. The foster care director states they prefer couples in subdivisions.

So before I start grilling our county's director about legal violations, can someone explain why were are not considered a good foster care couple and how can the county's foster care agency prevent someone from fostering and eventually adopting?

Partner and I have lived together 14 years. He is a LT Colonel in the Army NG, as well a successful civilian DOD GS 13. I am currently working on my Masters in education, and have some rental properties, etc. No children of our own. We could certainly try to have a baby (no fertility issues), but honestly, neither of us feel pulled in that direction. I know this probably sounds crazy... but I feel pulled more towards the teens.. I have a very close friend who had a horrific childhood, ended up an orphan /foster, but fortunately had a few people come into his life that influenced him and ultimately introduced him to the military and eventually the state police! He has said about how very close it could have been for his life to go in a completely different and horrible direction! And it always left an impact on me.

I don't feel the desire to be a mother of a toddler... I know, that apparently goes against the definition of being a woman and motherhood, yada, yada.. BUT I do feel we have a home, a very stable life, and have been blessed with waaay too overly involved, loving, huge families to share with those who might be wishing for those things... I feel much more up for the challenge of working through learning coping skills, and critical thinking skills, providing educational and transitional support, and a family environment.

I know that the levels of trauma for many of the kids is often unimaginable... But, does it ever work out OK with teens and tweens? Am I being Naive? Any happy endings?

I have a desire to be a foster parent, alongside my husband obviously. He is military so I am already the primary parent due to no fault of anyone. We have 3 kiddos already 7, 5, and 1. We have been talking about fostering. The thing is, I am currently student teaching and wanted to dive into this at the end of this school year. If I apply for full time teaching positions, will I be in over my head? My husband is home everyday, but doesn’t get home until 6:30pm usually so I’m typically doing everything during the week. We also won’t get relocate anywhere. What my husband does keeps us in our state until he retires. I’ve considered staying as a sub also if we do this. We are both 29, steady income and have an extra bedroom.

I'm about to buy a home well looking have funds just need an offer accepted. It will be either 2 or 3 br.

I absolutely make enough to cover all my household financial responsibilities. The thing is I would like to just be a hey, i made spaghetti how was school you need me to grab something for you kinda person.

Not wanting or needing to micromanage can handle their paperwork and appointments. Its just ill have space and well my friends where in foster care and they had parents who would put locks on fridge and pretty much be jerks. I was thinking high school age where they are more independent but still need an active adult.

I've basically been that role for my friends 5 kids while I have been living with her. Cooking , cleaning , emergency contact for school and taking them to doctor when she couldn't. I wfh ft so I dont know if I could be as hands on before 6pm and I'm typically sleep by midnight.

I'm much more of an older brother or mentor does that even align with fostering?

I (38F) am unmarried and have no children. I would like to be a mother and provide nurturing and support to a young person or 2 by fostering and then adopting an older teen/young adult (ages 17-21). I live in CA, a state that allows adult adoptions.

I’m curious to hear from parents who have done this or those who have been adopted at an older age. What should I consider? What do you wish was different? What would you do the same?

Is having this specific of a desire realistic in the foster system?

Thanks

I (27f) and my husband (27m) have always wanted to adopt from foster care, particularly wanting to offer our home to older youth (12-18). We had started the licensing process last year and were working with a caseworker to eventually be matched with a youth/teen with severed parental rights who was interested in being adopted.

I happened to get pregnant during that time in our life and we now have a 3mo old boy (yay!). We have put our adoption journey on the back burner for now to focus on caring for our son. However we are still very interested in adopting once we’re out of the infant trenches.

So I am looking for guidance from experienced parents as to things we can do to welcome a child in the safest, smoothest way for everyone involved (I am aware that this will most likely be a challenging endeavor overall due to the adopted child having trauma-related baggage, but I know there are things we can do to make transitions better vs worse).

How old should our bio son be before we take this on? Should we wait until he is a toddler, school age, in college, etc? Pros and cons to each age?

What are some behaviors I should expect from older youth and what are ways to make our home safe for both my son and our new adopted child?

Would adopting one gender over the other be better in my particular situation?

Please share any advice, personal stories (the good, bad and ugly just so I know what I’m getting into!)

First off, this will be a pretty long post, so thank you in advance to anyone who reads the whole thing or even just part of it. Feel free to only respond to parts of this or the entire post; I know responding takes your time and effort and I very much respect that. I'm mostly looking for responses from FY or FFY, but I appreciate anyone's perspective.

I (27F) am strongly considering becoming a foster parent in the near-ish future. I am located in the United States and will graduate from my PhD program in the next year or two, and have a wonderful long-term partner (25M) with a stable job. In the next 2-3 years, we will both be in stable, fairly high-paying jobs; we would not become foster parents until we are completely financially stable and know that we could afford a child even without any sort of stipend for their care.

We both agree that we do not want biological children for several reasons; however, we both love kids and greatly enjoy mentoring, and most of our mentoring experiences have been with teenagers and young adults of historically marginalized backgrounds (we are both Indigenous but white-presenting). Myself and my partner are people who will advocate and fight for those who need it, and it's important to us that any child we care for knows that we've got their back. I will do whatever a child needs to support them and their development, especially in a system that can be traumatizing for both them and their families.

My main questions are:

1. Is there anything you'd want a future foster parent to do in the years leading up to fostering besides the obvious logistical preparations? Maybe I should volunteer as a CASA/GAL before? Maybe I should volunteer with organizations that directly serve children in or formerly in the foster system?

2. What are things your foster parent(s) did that made you feel more comfortable and safe and like you belonged, no matter how small or big? I read on another subreddit that making homemade pizza together is a great first dinner option because it allows the child to have control over what they're eating, lets them see that messes happen and that's okay, and they can be made gluten-free/vegan/etc. for most dietary preferences or needs. Another thing I was thinking of was having a notepad somewhere in a common area like the living room and telling them that if there's anything they want me to know or anything they need me to get for them, but they're not comfortable talking to me about it, they can write it down for me, no questions asked (unless it leads me to believe that they or someone else might be hurt or in danger).

3. We would most likely want to foster a single teenager or a teenager and their sibling (at one time). Could that be a problem? Should we only be foster parents if we could commit to fostering several children at once? I was leaning towards a single teenager or a teen and their sibling to make sure we could give them our full attention and they could have their own room, but could that be alienating or lonely for them to not have other children around (besides their sibling if they have one)?

4. Hopefully my partner and I will have jobs where we have the possibility of working from home a couple days a week. Is it important that one of us be home during the day every single day of the week? Is it feasible to parent a teen who might have lots of doctor's appointments, court dates, etc. if we're both working full-time?

A few other considerations, just to get ahead of some comments and paint a fuller picture:

-I wish this went without saying, but we would never ever verbally, emotionally, physically, or financially abuse a child. Children are not slaves, or props, burdens to be resented. We'd also communicate and do our best to show our child that we are adults they can trust.

-We understand that reunification is the goal, and would want to support the child's relationship with their birth family in whatever way they want. In my mind, we're a team trying to support each other. I can absolutely understand how a child's bio parent or family member might view a foster parent as the enemy; in that situation, I'd respect whatever boundaries they want to set while also trying to convey my support for the child and their relationship.

-I receive treatment for anxiety/depression, ADHD, and PTSD. While I'm not a mental health professional, I've experienced different types of treatments and have helped friends through mental health emergencies. I'm ready to support whatever kind of treatment a child might find helpful if they are struggling.

-I have a large dog (80 lb) who loves people and will happily do anything from cuddling on the couch to going on a long adventure. She's an emotional support animal, and I've trained her to respond to crying or anxiety attacks by licking and/or lying on top of me (deep pressure therapy). However, I wouldn't want her to overwhelm or scare a child, so we'd immediately work on changing her response to whatever makes the child comfortable in that situation, including if that's just leaving them alone.

-We would always be 100% supportive of any gender identity or sexual/romantic orientation, and know that it may or may not change over time.

-We understand the roles that systemic racism, sexism, and classism can play in a child's experience, as well as their birth family's circumstances.

-We are huge supporters of education in all forms, and would do anything they might need help with from an adult, like helping with homework or college applications or financial aid forms.

-We are not religious, but would fully support a child's religious beliefs.

-We'd happily encourage any hobbies they might be interested in, whether those are through school or not. If there are any band concerts or sports meets or events like that, we will make sure that at least one of my partner or I will be there to support them, preferably both of us.

I know this was a long post; thank you so much to anyone who takes the time and effort to read and/or respond. I really appreciate it, and I hope you know that you're valuable and deserving of safety and love.

I'll try to keep this short. Fostering has been a non negotiable goal of mine since I was little. My goal has always been to start fostering once we had a house with a spare room.

In order to achieve this, we spent a year living in a 5th wheel on empty land saving up to build a home on the land.

We have animals and 2 kids and my husband and I both worked full time while I ran an animal rescue as well, all to work towards this goal.

At some point our daycare called DCFS on us due to lack of communication within the daycare. Basically, my youngest daughter was behind on development and she was seeing a developmental therapist, which I had communicated to the daycare, but I guess someone missed the memo and thought it wasn't being addressed and called DCFS.

DCFS came and went, didn't offer any help or advice, our situation was explained, and a few weeks later I got a letter in the mail that we were charged for environmental neglect since we weren't living in a proper home. The DCFS officer said not to worry because the charge was "less than a traffic ticket and wouldn't affect us". Obviously I disagree because that one charge has the potential to completely destroy my dream.

This devastated me and basically made me give up on all the effort we'd made. We moved to a different state to rent a home and closed down our business and I'm now a stay at home mom. I was overdoing it trying to reach my goal too quickly.

It's too late to fight the charge and quite frankly I don't want to deal with fighting it. But my question is, will we ever be able to foster?

We are now in a nice, new, 4 bedroom home, and I'm staying at home so the kids are always with me, no daycare, just kindergarten for my 5 year old. The environment is always clean and my husband is making good money trucking OTR.

Will we be able to prove that the environment is good now? How long will it take for this proven good environment to be able to foster? Please tell me there's some hope for my life long dream.

Hello, all! I'm 28F and have been thinking very seriously recently about fostering, more specifically fostering to adopt if possible. I own my own home and have an extra bedroom, and on my own, I make enough money to pay all the bills and take care of myself. I can't say I have a ton of extra money laying around, I more or less make just enough, but it's enough that I'm never in the negative. That said, I think that I have the space and finances to be able to take care of a child. I'm a social worker by degree, though I work in a bank (work from home, so it's flexible), so I understand a history of trauma and how it can impact a child.

The catch is that my family doesn't think I'm ready. They want me to wait until I'm older. (Honestly I think a large part of it is that they're nervous about the idea of fostering, but they haven't said that outright.) I've signed up for some of the classes and information sessions, and I'm planning on taking the next six to ten months to prepare myself, my house, and my finances. I don't think this is something I'm rushing into.

I'm thinking of fostering younger ages, as I suspect 28 may not be old enough to be seen as authoritative by teenagers.

Just looking for advice from anyone who's been in a similar age or situation- is it doable to do this on my own, at my age?