Permanent Care/Adoption

Very excited!!!! We had a meeting tonight with a foster agency an relation to becoming a permanent carer. We have a lot of paperwork to fill out but we are really excited that our DS will finally have a little brother or sister to play with.

We were looking at permanent care as an option to adoption. I was very surprised to find out that the rules have recently changed and they are now really encouraging permanent carers to adopt the children that have been placed into permanent care with them.

Very excited about what the next 12 months will bring.

That is awesome you are so excited about bringing a little person into your home!

Hope the wait for you will not be too long :)

Just wondering how your Permanent Care journey is going Lolly? It's something my DH and I are looking at, and I was just wondering how it's going for you.

Poncho

It is still progressing. He have had all of the medical and child protection checks done. Now just waiting for the interview process to start. I spoke to the agency just before Christmas and they said that this will all start this in January so any day now I hope. We are going with a NGO as we felt that the support you got from them was better than with DOCS. I mean DOCS no disrespect I just think that they are under resourced to cope with their work load IYKWIM. I have started to buy little things for her in the sales so it isn't so much of an outlay when we get the actual call.

Hi Lolly,

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 :lol:)...

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?

Hopeful, Fi

Fi

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?

........

How is it all going?

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.

How exciting and stressful for you, Good luck.

xoxo

Well they came and did the interview on the 27th and then went away again and we didn’t hear anything for a while. I got a phone call this afternoon saying that they wanted to come over and drop of a draft copy of all of their reports for us to review. If we agree with everything that is in the reports they will send the reports through to their Sydney office for approval. The pile of paperwork is an inch thick. Lots of reading to do but I have a feeling that we are getting close now.

I told her today that we have planned a family holiday for late July and will not be able to take her until we get back. We would be happy to take her with us but we have been reading about bringing her home and everything we read says that it is better to bring her into a normal household routine for a while so she can get used to us and us to her before we start loading her on planes etc. I am starting to get excited now. Wondering if I should start thinking about buying furniture so it is ready for her.

Very exciting update!

Well the furniture has all been ordered about 2 weeks ago. They said that it will take about 6 weeks for delivery. The last thing left in her room was a computer on a big computer desk. 2 weeks ago I bought a new laptop as my DS is now on the computer all the time and I didn’t want him using a PC in a room where I couldn’t see what he was doing. I spent a few nights after work formatting the pc and reloading software on it and it is now in the boot of my car waiting to be taken to my mum’s house later today. Her PC is really old and soooo slow and mine is quite fast so she is happy to have it.
Next week I am going to arrange for St Vinnie’s to come and collect the computer desk and then I need to get the carpet cleaned so it will then be a blank canvas. I managed to get some lovely curtains which have to go up and I ordered some wall stickers on ebay which are stored away safely in her wardrobe.
I think we are on track. I need to be ready as the agency knows when we will be coming back and I have a fear that they will call me the day we get home from Cairns and tell us she is here and ready to go. It probably won’t happen that way but at least I will be prepared if it does.
I met with a really nice couple earlier this week that were up visiting our area. They have recently taken permanent custody of two siblings. I have been chatting with her online and it was really nice to meet them and ask them questions about how they are finding the experience so far (they are going through a different branch of the same agency). They are only 4 weeks in but seem to be doing well and the kids seem quite settled. God I hope our placement goes as well.
My mum is getting excited also. She went shopping the other day and bought some beautiful clothes for my niece who is almost 3. When she showed them to me she told me that she had decided to keep them here for our little girl. It was hard because the clothes really were cute but I told her to give them to my niece. After all we don’t know what size she will be and they were to nice not to be used if she is too big for them when she arrives.
DS is asking how many sleeps till his sister comes. He is getting fed up with waiting. He tells me that he is going to teach her how to play Spiro on his play station LOL.
Well that’s my update for now. I will let you all know if anything changes in the near future.

Just a quick update.
The NGO sent us some paperwork while we were on holiday. This had our final paperwork which we had to sign and also some other stuff to do with sharing of personal info that we had to sign as the law had changed or something since we completed all of the rest of our paperwork. They said that once they receive this all the paperwork everything will go to Sydney for the final OK. We have sent all the paperwork back this week so we are hoping that it is now in Sydney.
Her bedroom furniture is arriving next Wednesday and we picked up the new car seats last week which we had on layby.
I am an Op Shop shopper and I have been picking up a few little outfits in size 3 and 4 as I figure that she will either fit into these or grow into them in the next few years.
I was in Target the other day with my mum and I couldn’t help but be drawn to the little girls clothes. It took all of my will power to walk out of there without buying anything.

I am just subbing as I really want to hear your story. I love the thought of what you are doing!

The furniture arrived two days ago and the head board of the bed is damages and has to be replaced GRRRRR. I was hoping to have the room set up by now. They have said it will take two weeks for the replacement to be shipped to us. Just have to wait, not much else I can do.

On a positive note, our agency has confirmed that our paperwork is in the Sydney office. Our CW is heading down there next week so she is going to follow it up and find out what is going on.
Waiting waiting and more waiting. I guess it is better that it takes longer as we don’t have a bed to put her in anyway.