Foster care!

[shadesong]

I have been meaning to deliver an update! I just hadn't done so because we were in the middle of it all. There's a lull, now

Comments

[dpolicar]

That's huge!
May it improve both your lives and the child's.

[lawbabeak]

I'm curious how they felt about y'all being poly, or if it came up at all.

I think you both are brave and courageous and wonderful for taking this on. Kids need adults like you.

[shadesong]

Pretty much I'm going to be a bit closeted about poly around the kid, which is fine. This is also why we're slightly leaning towards a younger kid - they don't tend to notice!

[desperance]

I have a question! It's purely hypothetical, but I'm curious: if someone were a friend and a regular visitor but chose not to be CORIed, would that mean you would have to turn them away at the door? Or would they only be allowed to visit less-than-once-a-month, or...?

[shadesong]

That is an interesting question! It would be situational. I'd ask the friend why they were unwilling to be CORIed - political-type objection? Is there something in their past? The foster care place is willing to do waivers on people who, say, were arrested for drug possession or had a DUI like 20 years ago and have had no incidents since... and that's for potential foster parents. OTOH, some offenses are just 100% not okay. If, say, I found out that a friend had a history as a perpetrator of sexual violence, I obviously would not be able to have them around a foster child, and would have to reevaluate my friendship with them...

So it depends, and I'd hope I could assure friends that it's okay if something pops on a CORI as long as it's a long-ago thing.

[moonfire77]

Question: was there discussion about whether you're willing/able to take kids with various disabilities? I'm sure having a disability makes a kid harder to place, so I'm curious where you stand on that for your family

[shadesong]

Yes! And we are willing to do so! There's an extensive checklist about which conditions we're able to manage; really we're willing to work with anything, but sadly can't accommodate a wheelchair user, because we have a lot of stairs and I'm not physically capable of carrying someone most of the time. :( (Our house isn't deleaded, so we can only take kids older than 6.)

[moonfire77]

Even just the willingness is awesome, and of course everyone has limits. Gotta say from everything I've read in your LJ over the years (wow I've been reading you a long time) any kid would benefit greatly from living with you, and I feel like you probably have a unique (or at least highly unusual among foster parents) perspective on disability. Yay for disability as a super power?

[jnanacandra]

Thanks for telling us about this process! It's really quite interesting.

My question is how much will you be allowed/willing to post about once you are a kid in residence? I'm curious if there are official guidelines on where the line is; anywhere from no information outside of the kid's existence to general outlines of situations like what you used to post about Elayna when she was younger. I know I would be very interested in hearing about what foster parenting is like, but obviously not at the cost of the kid's privacy or comfort.

(Apropos of nothing, you just got me to log into LJ for the first time in, um, years to make this comment!)

[shadesong]

There aren't official guidelines! But Adam and I agreed instantly that we really won't be posting about the kid much, certainly not to the extent that we've posted about Elayna; the kid will need a bit more privacy for various reasons. We'll use an initial or nickname to refer to them, and you'll probably see stuff like "going to Six Flags with Elayna and [KID]!", but their personal life will remain private. The stuff I post about being a foster parent will be pretty general.