[blparent] Fostering

Thu Aug 18 04:35:43 UTC 2011

Hi, Terri.  Please don't take anything I say in this post to be personal, 
because I don't mean it that way.  I don't know you or your particular 
situation.  My ex husband and I were interested in fostering around twenty 
years ago, and we were politely but firmly turned away at the door.  I know 
there are a lot of disabled couples out there who would make very good 
foster parents, and the need for qualified people is high.  However, after 
having been a parent myself, and also having watched my brother foster a 
baby he and his partner hope to adopt, I feel that there are a couple of 
things worth considering.

The first is that, while infants are wonderful and early bonding is 
important for families, they're also in very high demand.  When my brother 
was in the training classes to be a foster parent, he said eighty or ninety 
percent of the couples there were only interested in infants, and only 
infants whose mothers hadn't consumed alcohol during pregnancy.  The thing 
is, taking that view really limits the number of children available, and it 
also puts you into a pool of prospective parents where there's a lot of 
competition.  Not to say that blind people wouldn't be just as good at 
parenting, but frankly, social workers have more choices of where to put 
infants than they do older kids.  If you open yourself up to considering 
toddlers, or even older babies, you can still bond well with them if 
adoption is in the cards.  As far as moms who haven't consumed alcohol 
during pregnancy--well, let's just say, mothers who have stable, loving 
homes and no issues don't, as a rule, end up with their kids in foster care. 
The kids of any age are there because their natural parents have issues, or 
at least the county in question has reason to believe they do.

The other thing is, to put it bluntly, raising kids takes money.  I think 
the statistics you hear on the news and such are inflated, because babies 
and kids don't need all the stuff that's marketed toward them, and much of 
the gear and clothes and the like can be gotten used from relatives or 
thrift stores.  But still, kids are expensive.  It's true that foster 
children usually get Medicaid, or a comparable state health insurance, and 
often a small monthly allowance.  But small is the key word here.  My 
brother told me that in Colorado, the kids get a lifetime clothing allowance 
of eighty dollars.  Yes, I did say lifetime.  The families are also eligible 
for some food assistance.  But basically, there are tons of expenses that 
have to come out of the foster parents' pockets.  I'm not personally 
criticizing you or your financial situation because I don't know you and 
your finances are none of my business.  But I've been on S.S.I., and I'm 
just saying it would have been a stretch for me.  If you use disposable 
diapers, you'll spend a hundred dollars every few months.  Maybe cloth 
diapers are cheaper, I don't know.  But there's always something coming up 
that needs to be paid for.

These are just some things to mull over.  I firmly believe that blind people 
can and should be foster parents, and that many of them can offer patience, 
love, and attention that money could never buy for the kids who need it 
most.  But having some financial plans in place is part of the registration 
process--my brother and his partner had to disclose everything about what 
they make and what they've saved.  And the infant months go by so fast, as 
awesome as they are, that they're very short when compared to a whole 
potential childhood spent with the boy or girl that ends up getting adopted. 
It might be worth opening yourselves up to the possibilities of older kids, 
even if you want them to still be in their formative years.  My brother and 
his partner got their foster baby at seven months old, and he had no trouble 
at all bonding with them.  Breaking that bond may end up being a lot more 
traumatic after over a year--but that's a subject for another day.  If I 
were considering the possibility of fostering now, which I'm not because 
I've got a full plate, I would personally ask for kids who were between 
about two and four years old, the kids who've passed the "ideal age" in the 
beauty contest that potential adoptees have to endure.

Two bits worth of free advice,
Jo Elizabeth

"The only thing we have to fear is fear itself--nameless, unreasoning, 
unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into 
advance."--Franklin D. Roosevelt

--------------------------------------------------
From: <trising at sbcglobal.net>
Sent: Wednesday, August 17, 2011 7:04 PM
To: "NFBnet Blind Parents Mailing List" <blparent at nfbnet.org>
Subject: Re: [blparent] Fostering

> I was not sure how to fight it. Also, my husband and I are trying to find
> full time employment. When we can get off S.S.I., I think we will look
> better on paper, and also have the money to fight it.
>
> Terri Wilcox
>
>
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