If you are considering fostering and just starting out, I encourage you to first read through my posts on the Licensing Process if you haven’t done so already.
This next series of posts will discuss what to expect during the placement process. This is the period of time between getting a license and actually receiving your first child. In my opinion, the most stressful, anxiety-ridden time of the whole process.
As I mentioned in my last post, we received a call for a couple of children that were outside of the criteria we selected when filling out our application. And although it felt terrible to say that we wouldn’t accept these children, I believe it was the right decision. We felt God had placed a specific child or children on our minds and that’s why we filled out the application the way we did.
Setting those expectations up front with the agency you are working with will help you tremendously. If you are flexible, let the agency know that. If you aren’t flexible, make sure they know that too. There was not a harder moment in my life than to say “No” to those kids in need. So make your life easier by setting those expectations up front and don’t let them push you into making a decision you aren’t ready to make. Our agency was not pushy at all and I’m grateful for that, but I have read that some will pressure into making decisions you aren’t necessarily comfortable making.
Now that that’s out of the way, here is what you can expect once you get licensed.
A call at any time of day
I know for myself, I was ALWAYS concerned that I was going to miss that phone call because I was in the middle of a meeting, left my phone on the counter while I went outside, battery died, or any of the other million reasons we miss phone calls. The biggest impact it had on me was when I was asleep.
We would typically put our phones on airplane mode or left them downstairs at night. Due to basically being “on-call”, we left one of our phones in the bedroom with the volume up which led to a couple issues as we figured things out. Random alerts in the middle of the night (emails, texts, etc), which led to waking up and looking at the phone just to make sure you didn’t miss a call. All this led to extra anxiety and poor sleep.
As little information as possible
Imagine you went to a restaurant and looked at the menu and the items had absolutely no description of what they were. If you picked out a hamburger, you’d have a reasonable idea of what might come on it but if you were allergic to dairy, and not knowing if there was any dairy used on the burger, it might make you think twice about ordering it.
When making a decision about a foster kid, you are not going to get all the details. Making a life altering decision based on a single paragraph or less is likely to happen and having to do it within 5 minutes is also likely to happen. You may get a call stating that the child was abused but no details on what kind of abuse. If a child was abused a certain way, would that detract you from wanting to care for them? You may only get a first name, gender, and age range. And even the first name may be mispronounced or incorrect on your initial conversation with the foster agency.
For us, it was very important that the child was of a certain age. One of the calls we received, the agency couldn’t give us a birth date. So we had to make a decision on how important age was to us. For you, it may be their nationality, race, religion, gender, etc. If the child was a mixed nationality, would you still be able to care for the child as you want to even if they don’t fit the exact criteria you were looking for?
Just Breathe
Those phone calls are some of the hardest decisions we’ve ever had to make as a couple. Meanwhile, on the other side of things is a child that has gone through at least one horrible event that no human (let alone a child) should have to go through.
One thing that I have to remember is to just breathe. In those intense moments while on the phone with the agency, take a second and just remember why you are doing what you’re doing. For us, it’s because we felt God called us to do this. We also know God called a specific child to be placed in our care and put specific criteria in our hearts that will lead us to that child. And remember, even if you tell the agency that you want that child, you may not get them, as we found out numerous times.