Foster Care

What. A. Season.

All I can say is God is good. This has been such a season of seeing His faithfulness and favor work out right in front of us.

Cole and I started praying about foster care and looking into it around April of this year. We attended an open house through DCF, which is basically an informational meeting, in early May. We filled out a formal application and submitted it later that week and we had our first home interview in late May or early June.

I was so nervous over that meeting, having no idea what to expect. But it was so simple. The man who came to our house was so sweet and easy-going and told us he was going to recommend us for what they called a “Weekend for a Lifetime”. A new event DCF was trying out where instead of taking 14 weeks of classes, you get almost all of your training done in one weekend. We were pumped. 14 weeks sounded like such a long time and such a process and they weren’t even starting until November. So to be able to fast track that process would be such a blessing.

He told us someone would be in touch about the next steps in a couple of weeks and we were PRAYING for that weekend opportunity to come to fruition. But then weeks went by, and months went by, and we heard nothing. Finally, in mid-late July we found out that the weekend event was already full and we were on a waiting list with about 30 other people, we were bummed. We were still praying that God would somehow make it possible for us to attend that weekend but started to accept the fact that we probably wouldn’t and that maybe the longer training would be better and give us more time to prepare.

We hadn’t told a single person through any of this process. We wanted to make sure that we were pursuing this because it’s what God called us to and what we agreed together and didn’t want to be swayed or influenced by anyone else’s opinions, good or bad. We finally told our families in early August and started to tell our friends after that. All the while assuming that we wouldn’t even be starting training until November.

On Thursday, August 22nd I got an email saying we were number 2 on the waiting list for the weekend event that started THE NEXT DAY. They asked if we wanted to be notified if people didn’t show up on Friday evening so we could join Saturday morning. We said YES.

The next day, the 23rd, I went to the beach with a friend of mine because it was my birthday. I got a phone call around 2pm saying that a few people had dropped out and they asked us if we could be at the event at 6pm. It was a whirlwind. I drove home from the beach and Cole left work a bit early, we threw some clothes in a suitcase, ate Panera on the way and checked into a hotel in Glastonbury. We spent the next 48 hours in pretty much back to back trainings. It was INSANE. Tons of information in such a short amount of time, but seriously such a blessing to be able to get it all done so quickly.

After the event was an overload of paperwork. Everyone who knew ahead of time that they would be attending the weekend training had a list of paperwork and requirements they had to do before the event, and we had done none of them. So we were playing catch-up with all of that along with filling out all the post-event paperwork that was given to us. We had about 3 weeks to get all that stuff done which was crazy but definitely possible.

Once we turned all that stuff in, we waited about a month to hear from someone again to schedule our fingerprinting and our home interviews. Cole and I each had to do a personal home interview, we had to do a home inspection and a joint interview. We did our fingerprinting first and then about 3 weeks later had our interviews. Everything went super smoothly and the woman doing our interviews was so generous and stayed late one day so we could just get it all done at once.

This is where we are in the process now. From here, DCF has a lot of paperwork and approvals that need to get done in the background. They’re checking references, doing background checks, typing up all the information from our inspection and interviews, filing paperwork, etc.

Once all that is done, we’ll have one final meeting to look over everything and make sure all the information they have is correct and there’s nothing we want to change. It’ll then all get passed up to supervisors and wait for final approval. At the moment the goal is to have final approval done sometime between December 1st and Mid-December. Once that happens we’ll be in the system and just waiting until they have a child we would be a good match for.

This has been such a learning and growing experience for us both, yet I’m sure we’ve only dipped our toes in all that we will learn and experience through this process in the future. We are honored and excited that God has called us to this immense responsibility and although it seems so overwhelming and scary at times, we have full faith that God equips those He calls.

We’re so excited to finally share this with everyone. This is something Cole and I have always had on our hearts, something we talked about very early on in our relationship and something I’ve known I wanted to do from a very young age. This is not a plan B for us, Foster Care and Adoption is how we’ve decided to grow and build our family and we are so expectant to see all that God does in us and through this process.

We’re not naive to how hard this will be, or how unprepared we probably are. But we know that God’s strength is made perfect in weakness. These children need us and we’re willing to sacrifice all that it takes to love them well. Yes, we will get too attached, we will be devastated if/when they leave, but if we don’t love them with full abandon while they’re with us, who knows if anyone ever will.

We welcome questions and especially welcome prayers. We know it takes a village to raise a child and we hope you’ll be a part of ours.