Thursday, September 4, 2014

A Non-Update Update on our Foster Adoption

You may or may not have wondered over the last year how our foster adoption journey has been going. If you see us regularly, you probably realize that it hasn't really been going anywhere at all, because we don't have any new kids.

It's been 10 months since we were approved for foster care through Sunrise Children's Services. We've accepted a handful of referrals during that time for kids from 2 weeks old to 12 years old, but we weren't chosen for any of them.

I didn't know exactly how the referral process worked before we got into this, so I'm going to assume that at least someone who reads this won't either. I thought that if we got a call and accepted a placement, then that child or sibling group was as good as ours. Not so. Usually several people will accept the same placement, so the child's worker will collect all of the homestudies and decide which one seems like the best fit.

There are several factors involved in choosing which home is right for each child: obviously the needs of the child are the top consideration, but we've learned that the convenience of the worker is also weighed. If it's between two ostensibly equal homes, but one is a 10 minute drive for the worker and the other is an hour drive, guess which one they're going to choose. I really can't say I blame the workers, but it just stinks when you live out in the middle of nowhere like we do.



We LOVE Sunrise. We really super do. Sunrise is a ministry of our Kentucky Baptist Convention, and if you are a member of a baptist church in Kentucky, then it's likely that part of your tithe goes toward supporting them. You should be proud of that. Our training was wonderful, and the post-placement support is apparently top-notch. One of the things we loved about going with Sunrise is that they hold your hand and help you out a lot more than the state caseworkers are able to. Being a Christian organization with Christian staff, it is wonderful to pray with them, receive Godly counsel, and know that they are making their decisions based on prayer and a desire to honor God.

That said, we knew going into it that we may wind up having to switch to going through the state. With Jude being nonverbal, our parameters for the children we will accept are pretty narrow. That, combined with us living in no man's land, has made getting a placement through Sunrise difficult.

We began the process of switching to the state a couple of months ago, and I'm told that we should be approved by the end of the day tomorrow. Everyone at the DCBS office has talked like we should receive a placement pretty quickly after that, so we'll see what happens.

We are so eager to have more kids in our home and in our family! Will you pray with us that the Lord would be pleased to do that soon?

2 comments:

  1. Love your heart and am thankful for this. Praying now for y'all.

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  2. Praying for you all! And excited for you!

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