Because we are selling our house and haven’t started building our new home yet, we had to put our home on hold with DCS. That means we won’t be accepting any new foster placements for a while. It could end up being almost a year, which is hard because we feel really burdened for the kids who need places to go and parents to love them, especially around the holidays. It breaks my heart to have to say no to a call…and we had been getting a couple calls a week before we asked our case manager to take our name of the list for now.
One particular call was so hard to say no to. Usually the placement worker starts off with just the child(ren)’s age(s) and gender(s) and that’s as far as the conversation goes unless we say we’re interested. But as we were driving home from Thanksgiving in Pennsylvania, I got a call and the worker went straight into describing the situation. It was for a 6 year old boy whose mother had been shot by her boyfriend the night before. Their only family was in another country. Our hearts were so broken for that boy and we really wanted to say yes. Jason, my dad and I took a moment to pray for the kiddo, poor guy. (My mom was napping at the time.) It was even more heartbreaking to hear about the story on the news in the following days and to talk to my friend who is an ER nurse at the hospital where his 8-month pregnant mom was taken. The baby also died. So sad.
But, we don’t want to say yes, welcome a child into our home and then have to send him or her off to another foster just because we’re moving. It wouldn’t be fair to the kid. We want to be available for as long as we’re needed for the child—forever, if that’s how the situation works out. We’re building a bigger home so we can have room for more children but in the meantime, it’s difficult to not be able to do more to help. I’m afraid I might just have to become a foster parenting advocate and try to recruit more people to become foster parents.
You should do it. Seriously? What’s stopping you?
myMCMlife.com 
How I would love to foster a child. Unfortunately our Australian system lets the foster carers down and the children.
The reason why I don’t foster is I am super sensitive, and it would KILL me to have a baby or child only for it to be taken from me and given back to it’s crack-head parents. That’s how the system works here, a child belongs with it’s parents first and foremost in their eyes.
Recently police found a baby that had died 8 days previously in a house with it’s teenage parents (who are druggies) A friend of mine told me that she knew a nurse who had reported them to Families SA when the baby was born, only to be told, ‘ We don’t have the resources’
What a load of rubbish. Tell me what foster family would have said no if they had received that call to take the baby.
The state let that baby down, and many more cases that I know of, that they are too lazy to act on.
But I am still considering fostering. I held a baby in care the other day, and the urge to love and care for under priveleged children is huge.
Bless you for doing this…you are amazing
Hey. So I’m a new silent lurker. I can’t remember how I found your blog, but I love it. Thanks for writing so honestly. I cried when I read that you finally got Precious. What a blessing. I grew up with foster kids coming in and out of our home and my heart will always be sensitive to it. My husband and I would love to someday be foster parents and hopefully adopt too. Right now though, we are awaiting our own little one’s arrival in April which is something we honestly didn’t think was going to happen. God intervened in ways we never thought possible. So hopefully someday our little girl will be surrounded by foster children and get a bigger picture of love, family, hospitality and who God is just like I did as a child. Merry Christmas to you and your precious home!
My husband is a social worker, so we have this conversation every year or so when he becomes attached to a child in a terrible situation – even though taking in one of his kids would mean quitting his job. Every year we have prayed about it and another solution has presented itself so that we have not brought a child in, but more and more as we consider children of our own, we are thinking about fostering. Your blog, which I initially started following because I wanted to see what you did with the landscaping, is playing a small role in this consideration so you are already an advocate.