Have you been a foster parent to an infant?

stormwarnfm

I have not been, but I have friends that have been, or are, right now.

Reunification is always the goal of any foster care situation. Some babies have only been in care for a few days, and then some never leave the system.

Typically, at least in my friend's situations...the baby stays with them 6 months to a year...long enough for their birth parents to work on the plan assigned to them (get a job, housing, break a bad habit like drugs or alcohol, etc), and then they either go back home, or get adopted by the foster family or another family if the foster family doesn't have adoption as their second option for that child.

sweetjane

Emergency foster care has many infants, as they mainly deal with abuse and drug exposed infants. Emergency foster care generally lasts from 24 hours to 30 days. It will largely be dependent upon your location as to what type and age the majority of children are. General foster care sometimes has infants, but they usually like to keep just born children in the same home if at all possible until they can be returned home or placed in a foster to adopt home. A natural family has 15+ months to get things 'fixed' within the home/personally before an adoptive family can be considered, unless the situation warrants immediate termination. So, most children eligible for adoption will be at least 15 months old....but they can be in the 'foster to adopt' program before that time if the parents haven't showed any progress or haven't visited their child (neglect), etc/

Linny G

I have 2 friends who have been foster parents for over 20 years. They have adopted 1 infant daughter, whom lived with them for 7 years, and then they adopted her.

In general, infants will stay anywhere from a week to 4 months. They are amazing people.

Jill_01

We were considering to do a foster to adopt program and were told infants are rarely placed.
How long they stay would be determined by the specific situation so no one could really say.

there is no hard or fast rule here. Yes we are fostering an infant right now and soon will be adopting him. We were not looking for an infant actually but we are a foster to adopt home and first mom has a long history with CPS going back 15 years. They figured she would not work her plan and wanted him to go into one home and stay. If we had said no he would of gone to another foster home and now 5 months later that he is availble for adoption he would be placed on the internet availble for anyone who wanted to adopt from foster care .

Mom to Foster Children

We had a 7 month old move in because of Meth use by his mother. He stayed with us till right before his 2nd birthday and then went home to his father for about three months - now he is back with us and it looks like he will be up thru next spring.

Just a Mom

We only got infants because we were taking in the whole sibling group.

sizesmith

In our area, a small rural part of a midwestern state, 2 infants were left at the hospital with consent to adopt forms for the state signed last week. Even though these 2 infants will have the parents go through the motions, or at least give them the opportunity, many don't bother and the babies get placed for adoption eventually. I know of 4 people in our small community who have adopted infants through the foster care system, who were all healthy, not physically, and not radically drug abused. Right now, with the economy, and with the prices of groceries, gas, and more having gone up, at least 124 kids are expected in our 5 county area to be taken between Dec. 1 and Jan 10, during the holiday season, in an area where the largest town has only 12,000 people. 3 of the counties don't have a town over 1400 people in them. That doesn't include the children already in care. It's a sad fact our children suffer like this in our country.

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