How is the journey going? Do you have your little girl yet.
I'm new to this site and have been reading stories of permanent care. I would be very interested in any information to my many questions (just two below to start )...
1) How long does the whole process take from start to finish?
2) Is it best to keep your scope open with ragard to what age you would take, sibling groups etc?
My husband and I have had 9 heartbreaking failed atempts at IVF to no avail. My sister has also offered to be egg donor but she is only 24 and I have been warned that she may be too young. Anyone out there have any info on this.
If we went down the egg donor path with someone we did not know..how hard is this?
We are still waiting for our little girl, I am in NSW and it takes about 6-9 months here from when you lodge all your paperwork to get approval. We lodged ours in October last year and I have attended the compulsory parenting course. I already have a bio son and didn’t understand why I had to do the course at the time. Afterwards it all made sense and I am really glad that I did it. It really opened my eyes to what it is like to have a foster child. I now understand that it really is a hard job and that these kids come with a lot of baggage. It didn’t deter me at all, but I feel that we are going into this with our eyes open. I am going through an NGO (non government organisation) as I felt that the support was better. I think DOCS do a wonderful job but they are under resourced and I felt we as carers got much better assistance with an NGO. Once you get approval it still may take a bit of time to get a placement. The NGO is going to match a child with us. Children with specific needs will be placed with families that are best able to meet their needs.
We have been assigned a case worker but our interviews have been delayed. We are wanting a little girl around the age of 2-3 as they have to be at least 2 years older than your youngest bio child and my son has just turned 5 last week. When I rang them to see what the hold up they told me that they had to push a few people in front of us because they were wanting to take older children and they had some older kids come to them in urgent need of placement. I can’t really argue with that even though I am feeling impatient. The important thing is that the older kids have somewhere safe to live so I just have to wait a bit longer.
From what I have worked out they generally but not always try to keep siblings together. As far as age goes you can be as specific as you like I am not sure if all agencies have the policy about the foster child being minimum of two years younger than your youngest bio or if it is just ours.
My husband and I are foster carers on the central coast, we have two in our care til they turn 18 and are in the process of adoption. From what we have experienced Docs really do try and keep siblings together, ours are brother and sister, same birth mother. As far as I know you do have to wait two years, good luck with everything, hope it turns out how you would like it too. Very rewarding, wont sugar coat thing it can be hard at times with the contact visits and other things, I wouldnt change it for anything.
how are things going with getting your DD? i was looking into foster care before i was pregnant with J, and now that we've lost him, am starting to think about it again....although obviously down the track, but was just wondering how you go with the process? i would probably look into long-term or permanent care for kids aged under 3?
Sorry guys, I don't get a chance to get on here very often. Nothing much has happened yet but we do have them coming out on the 27th to do the interview. They are going to do all 4 interviews that they would normally do separately in the one day to get it over with. She said once that is done then they process all the paperwork, we get to review it to make sure that we agree with everything they document and then it gets sent to their Sydney office for approval. They did say that it will take about another 2 months before we will get approval (if we get approval) and then it may take a while longer until they find us a placement. At least we are moving forward now. I was starting to think that they had forgotten about us for a while there.
I have started to buy all of her bedding etc so there isn't so much of a big outlay later on. I am holding off getting any bedroom furniture yet though (just in case it doesn't happen). I have two spare rooms that are both filled with baby stuff from my son. I have finally found someone to give his cot to. I loved his cot and didn't want to just give it to anyone so the spare rooms are so full of baby stuff that you can't move. Most of that will be gone in the next few weeks so I will be able to make one of these rooms into DD's room. It is starting to get exciting now.
I will post again after the interview on the 27th and let you all know how it goes.
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