Foster Parent Licensing

Sean and I started working on getting our license to foster parent in May 2018. We have one class, one doctor appointment, one immunization, and one home study to go before we are done.

Contrary to the norm, it was Sean pushing to have children, not me. He’s been trying to get me to concede to having kids pretty much since we got married. We really want to adopt a child out of the foster care system in Utah. There are about 250 kids at any given time in the foster system, and only 150 foster families available. About 50% of the children placed with a foster family end up being able to be adopted. The rest are reunified with their parents.

We had to attend eight training classes, each of which were three hours long. They were interesting classes that taught us about child development, the effects of abuse and neglect on children, and trauma that children in foster care are likely to experience. As you can imagine, children who end up being adopted must go through the grief process of losing their birth parents. We learned about the services available to children in care — they qualify for Medicaid, free counseling, tutoring, and reimbursement by the state for all of their living expenses.

I really hope that we are able to adopt the first child placed with us. We are requesting a child in the 0-5 year old range. We learned in class that adopted children will go through more identity issues than your average teen – not only will they be trying to figure out who they are, but they will also be trying to figure out where they came from and why they are the way they genetically are.

Something that we are supposed to do as foster and adoptive parents is to include the birth family in our child’s life as much as is healthy. If the child has any extended family that wants to maintain a healthy relationship and can keep commitments to the child, then it’s much better for the child’s sense of belonging, value, and support.

Sean and I really hope we get a funny, cute kid that is able to overcome his (or her) trauma and let us love him and show him his great worth. Sean actually would love to adopt a sibling pair, but being brand new parents, I don’t feel like I could handle two at once. I am still working as a lawyer part-time and hope to share parenting with Sean as close to 50/50 as possible. He is going to try to be available to watch the child and work from home when I have to go to court or meet with clients.