Onward to Fostering

Two weeks before our foster training classes were supposed to start, we found out that they were cancelled. Since we have been planning on and gearing up for those classes since October, it was pretty frustrating to find out that we had come so far and waited so long only to have to start back at square one. We were pretty bummed for a couple days, and then started thinking back to all the different ways God has proved that His timing and plan are so much better than ours. We realized that this class was obviously not the path we were to take to be united with our child and, although it was still frustrating to have to investigate more agencies and do more applications, we had peace about taking a different route.

After a couple weeks of uncertainty, we are excited to finally have some solid direction! We applied with Methodist Home for Children and found out last week that we are officially accepted to partner with the agency! Literally every facet of the training and agency relationship is better than working with the county like we were before the classes were cancelled.

• We will have further training through this agency and feel better equipped to take on the struggles and painful circumstances kids in foster care have faced
• The private agency is much more personal and better able to respond to us and our needs, as the county will be the guardian and advocate for the children in either circumstance--we will now also have more of a backup through the agency
• Since the agency is private and has a religious affiliation, we will be encouraged to have the kids in church and share the hope that we have in Christ with them
• MHC has a specific foster to adopt program so if we choose to do so we can take a more straightforward adoption path 
• MHC has offices in Raleigh so whenever we move back we won't have to transfer our license at all or work with a different group!
• The couple from our church is also going to be working with MHC so we will automatically qualify to provide respite for one another's foster kids, which will be great to have a quick, go to babysitter in case we need one at the last minute (although other friends and family can babysit for short or long periods of time, we just have to go through the agency before leaving the kids with anyone not licensed through the agency)
  

We have a little better picture of what the next few months will look like now after meeting with MHC. We'll begin classes on April 4th and they will meet on Monday and Thursday nights from 6-9:30pm. The class will also include two Saturdays of training where we will learn non-violent crisis intervention and have a full CPR, first aid and medication administration training. We'll graduate from the training by the end of May, and they have scheduled weekly assignments throughout the classes where we will complete pieces of the 25-page licensing application for the state so that will all be finished by the time the course is over.

Our main concern for this schedule was that it would take too much time away from Stephen's studying for boards during the week. After comparing the dates, there will really only be two classes before he takes the boards, and two of the weeks he will be on break from school so he won't have to worry about studying at night at all!

Since we usually eat dinner at home each night, I was worried that two nights a week would be really stressful cooking, eating, cleaning up and getting over to the other side of town by six for the whole evening until basically bedtime. But, MHC has a team that cooks dinner for the MAPP trainees each class! We will arrive to class and eat dinner with our group, giving us more opportunities to build a relationship with the other trainees and the staff who will be matching us with foster kids.

For the other requirements of licensing, we'll both have a background check and will be fingerprinted, we'll get physicals and a doctor's note on our health, a fire marshal will inspect our house, and we will have a couple visits with the agency for our home study. After all of those requirements are met, we will just be waiting for the state to process and approve our paperwork! It sounds like they expect the process to take around six months from start to finish.

It is definitely intimidating to think of conquering all of this in the next few months and then even more intimidating to imagine having kids later this year. But we're so excited to be on this path and have a new direction which we feel so comfortable with!

~ Buzzy and Buckwheat