Sorry to those of you that are vegetarians, vegans, or just in general don’t like meat. But the whole pre-license process is somewhat like smoking a brisket.
If you are as particular about your brisket as I am, you will know immediately what I’m talking about.
Step 1 : The Discussion
It begins with the question
What do you want for dinner tonight?
– Wife
My response 9 out of 10 times would be “brisket” if I could magically make fantastic brisket in 30 minutes. Unfortunately, I don’t have those super powers.
My response after carefully considering my options:
Doesn’t matter, but next week I can smoke a brisket.
To which my wife kindly responds:
You can’t next week because …….
Usually some long discussion about how much we have going on and there’s not time to smoke a brisket. So I usually have to plan about a month in advance just to reserve a weekend. Similar to the foster process, you aren’t going to get what you want today, next week, or even a month from now but it all starts with the discussion. It takes time.
Step 2 : Picking out the Brisket
There are many options when picking out a brisket. You can go with a small meat market, a large grocery chain, a farmer, you can get prime brisket, just the flat, just the point, a small one, a big one, a fatty one, a firm one, and the list goes on and on. So many choices it’s almost overwhelming. You can spend a small fortune or just a couple bucks for a pound of meat. You can get a brisket that’s so big, it will barely fit in a regular backyard smoker.
Deciding on a brisket is easy compared to the choices you will have to make when considering adding a child to your family. You can straight adopt, you can foster to adopt, or you can just foster. Within each of those there are a multitude of agencies willing and wanting to work with you. Some costing a small fortune and some costing a big fortune.
Then once you’ve decided which of those three options you want to pursue, the amount of decisions you will have to make quickly builds up.
Do you want a kid from the US, China, Russia?
Do you want a newborn, a 2 year old, a teenager?
Do you want a kid of a different race?
Do you want a boy or a girl?
Do you want a kid that has some mental or physical disabilities?
The list goes on and on. Be prepared.
Step 3 : Checking on the Ingredients
You’ve picked out your brisket and now it’s time to try a new seasoning mixture. You carefully did your research and found one that sounds amazing so you pull out your list and grab everything on it. Except that you forgot to unfold the paper and missed about half of the spices. So you run back to the store and get those. And then pull up the recipe on your computer and realize you don’t have enough garlic powder, so you run back to the store and get that only to realize you had already bought some. Right when you get you home your wife asks you to go run and grab some corn. Then you realize you forgot charcoal……
The paperwork process for fostering/adopting is kind of like that. A little tip, we stored everything in Dropbox, which after a little research, seemed to be one of the more secure cloud storage sites out there. Good luck.
Step 4 : Smoking
You finally get everything seasoned, potentially the day before and the morning comes to get that sucker onto the smoker. You fire it up, toss the brisket on….and wait. And wait some more. And then wait some more.
Depending on your agency, you may be waiting a long, long time in between communications. It can be frustrating, if you aren’t in a hurry now, you might be at some point, or vice versa. Make sure you are working with an agency that is flexible. Now is a good time to make sure you are working with an agency that fits your needs. Hopefully you haven’t put too much money into it and can still take time to switch it up if needed.
Step 5 : The Anticipation/Anxiety
The time comes to take that brisket off of the smoker! It’s so close and the smell is amazing. But now the brisket has to sit for awhile longer off the heat. The anticipation for how this one is going to taste is unbearable.
This is how finishing up the home study will feel. You are practically done with everything you can be, so now you just have to sit back and wait. Whoever did your home study will likely take what feels like forever to type up and submit your report. CPS will likely take what feels like forever to review it.
Meanwhile all you can think about is how ridiculous the whole process feels when there are so many kids out there in need. You also realize that there are so many kids out there in need because of bad choices or bad situations. So it makes sense to make people go through this whole process but that doesn’t make it any less frustrating.
This is also a good time to reflect on some of the things you learned. We heard over and over:
If you are getting a kid of a different race, you need to learn how to do their hair.
Sounds simple but this could become a major issue with the child’s parents. You probably learned about how the kids are taken from their homes (usually in drastic ways), learned about why kids are taken from their homes, about how kids are often separated from siblings, what it’s like for infants to go through withdrawals, and other horror stories from other foster parents.
It’s a lot to take in. If you have the finances and ability, I’d recommend a vacation right about now.
Step 6 : Trial
The time finally comes to give it a try. How will yours turn out?
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The Full Series:
- Quick Recap of How I Got to Where I Am Now
- Why Foster to Adopt?
- The Full Pre-License Process (this one)
- Foster Process – Phase I (future)
- Foster Process – Phase II (future)
- Foster Process – Phase III (future)
- Scratching the Surface: Religion (future)
- Overwhelmed (future)