What a Process: My Fostering Process

Today is the day.  This day my foster care licenser will come to my home for the first time.  I have taken the training classes. My husband and I are CPR certified, checked by a doctor, TB free, fingerprint clearanced, and have worked to prepare the home.  This is in addition to the piles of paperwork that have had to be filled out. Hours have gone into this, and yet I feel so unprepared. Why is it that birth parents have to do so little in order to keep their children, or to get them back if they were in foster care, but the foster parents have to jump through hoops?  Why is it that those who care enough to take on someone else’s child, have to do so much work to prove that they are worthy? Not only is it difficult to care for another person’s child at times, but these are not typical children. These children have been through real trauma. They come with hurts that no one may be able to fully heal.  

Today is the day where I turn in the last bit of paperwork that is required.  They need a floor plan with emergency exits, doctor’s paperwork, including vaccine schedules, and a case study.  The state has gotten into our personal lives so much already, and now they are coming to scrutinize my home. The place where my family lives, and eat, and sleeps.  The visit today is mostly about turning in the last bit of paperwork, and finding out from my licenser what else we need to do at the house. We have locked up our medicine, and weapons.  We have bought an extra bed, and bedding. I have stored up my daughter’s hand me down clothing. Yet, I feel worried about my house. Is it clean enough? I doubt it. Therefore, I will spend the next five hours making sure that everything looks perfect.  I can only hope that the kids do not tear it apart as I do so

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Cleanliness is my biggest struggle, because we all live here.  As I cleaned my room this weekend, they dropped their coats, and shoes in another room.  As I swept, and vacuumed upstairs, they tracked in mud and dirt downstairs. I have wiped up my countertops, but is almost spring so there are also seeds planted in containers here and there.  As I do all of this cleaning to prepare, my washer began to overflow. So I just hope that my house does not smell like dirty laundry on my licenser’s visit.

I hope that I am prepared for this.  But will I ever really be? I can make my house looks clean, but am I really prepared for the heartbreak that lies ahead?  I have been reading books written by other foster moms, about the joys, and the sorrows of caring for a child that will not stay.  I pray that I can get through today, so that I can be there for these children, but I also pray that I can get through the years of pain, and sorry that may be to come.