What is Foster-adoption?

       When people hear that we are in the process to adopt they ask, "From another country or a baby?" meaning international or domestic infant adoption. More often than not when I tell people we are going to adopt through the foster system they have no idea what I am talking about. Everyone knows about domestic, or private adoption (which can also be called a relinquishment, because the birth parents willfully relinquish their rights to the adoptive parents) and adopting orphans from other countries has become very popular (thanks to Madonna, the Jolie-Pitts family and Stephen Curtis Chapman). But there are also THOUSANDS of children in our own country that are waiting to be adopted, and they're waiting in the very broken foster care system.
        If there are concerns about a child's welfare, Child Protective Services (CPS) is called. The child, or children, are then taken into custody and placed in a foster home. The goal of CPS and foster care is to remove children and place them in a safe environment while the parent, or parents, work to make their lives so that their children will be safe with them.  Which I believe if the parents can get their lives together, is the best option for children. I am really going to try to not get into all the ways the system is failing kids, but let me just say that it is; some children are kept in lingo way to long while their parents are given years to straighten out and the children really suffer. Okay I'll try to stay off that soap box :). Once reunification with the parents is proven to not be in the child's best interest the court looks for adoptive parents for the children. Many times they look to the foster family first, as well as any stable biological family. If both those options are not available the search for a family begins. That is where our agency comes into play.   
       We had a home study done, extensive interviews and questionnaires filled out, as well as fingerprinting and referral questions from friends. Our agency asked us for family pictures, and they put together a family profile for us. We went to two "family fairs" where we met with many social workers from counties all over northern California and talked with them and handed out our profile. Our social worker has also given it out to other counties.  There are three ways we will hear about children available for adoption. Either their country social worker will see our profile at the county office and contact our social worker specifically about us, or they will contact our agency and ask if any families are searching for a child that matches the child (or children) they have. What also may happen is that the county social worker will share the child's profile at a monthly meeting that takes place, which is what happened with the last little one we heard about. The best scenario for us really is that  they would call our social worker specifically about us; that means they already read our profile and are interested in us. Other wise they are searching for a family and will most likely get many profiles from families looking to adopt children. The majority of people looking to adopt are looking for the same thing we are: a young girl. That means that this process may take a very long time. In January we were approved to start our child search and we were told to expect to wait a year to year and a half. Of course we are hoping and praying that it will be sooner, but only God knows!
        So that's a very brief explanation about the process we will go through to adopt, and adopting from the foster care system. As to why we chose this way, I really just think it's a God thing. We feel that He lead us to this and we have a peace about adopting this way.  The fact the we can change a child's life is something that makes us hopeful, but we really just started this because we want a daughter. Once we looked at foster-adoption we felt that this would be a good fit for us, and God has really given us a soft heart for these children that are waiting to be placed with their forever families. We wish we had a bigger house so we could adopt more, but we can't adopt all of them. And with this life stage we're in with our boys the age they are, we think that only a younger sister (or maybe two?) is what would work for us.