Excited to Begin

Today Tim and I started something.  A new beginning [not an ew as I just accidently typed].

We met with Christine Hains [love her last name!] to talk about foster care.

And we are signed up for our orientation meeting on January 4th!

Our meeting today was a sort of pre-interview for the foster care system.  We met with Christine and answered some questions for her.  Questions like What interested you in fostering? and What are your expectations for children that will be placed with you? as well as standard questions like How many bedrooms do you have? and Do you have any pets?  We also were able to get some of our questions answered.

Overview of what we are thinking:
We are going with the goal of loving on children and providing them a good home while their birth family gets their life in order.  If that doesn't happen, then we will consider adoption, but only then and not before.
We would like to foster children from 0-3 years old.
We are open to sibling groups which means that we might foster older children too, but we will evaluate that if we are contacted about it.
We are open to children with special needs, but will also consider it on a case by case basis.
We would probably be placed with children for up to 12 months.  After 12 months, if they are not re-united with their birth family, parental rights are typically terminated then adoption might be an option.

Process from here:
We have an orientation meeting on Jan. 4th.  Then we will fill out an application, submit that, get finger prints done, then wait on the state of Michigan to "enroll" us [takes 4-6 wks].  Then we will be assigned a case worker who will begin the homestudy process.  Once that is complete, we will be officially registered in the foster care system : )

But all of this will probably take 6 months, and since we are looking at younger children, there aren't as many placements needed for them, so we may not have a foster child until this fall... but the ball is rolling!

What an exciting time!