How can you ever be sure?

grapesgum

I think you are doing exactly what you need to do to be 99.99% sure. You are making a sincere effort to educate yourself about the pitfalls of adoption from the point of view of all parties involved. It is very admirable as many people involved in adoption just run away from reality and continue to stick their heads in the sand.

No one is ever 100% sure about anything when it comes to issues with lots of gray area like adoption and family. I agree with Carnie on this. In 99.99% of the cases, TPR through the social services does not happen overnight. In fact, I think that deadbeat parents are given too many chances. (Soapbox statement - Anyone who hurts a child should do mandatory jail time, and then get one and only one chance to clean up their parenting act.)

Lori - That is so sick. I hope it is the .01% of the cases. If not, I take back everything I wrote here except that I have huge respect for any adoptive parent who educates him/herself about adoption before he/she adopts.

Looney Tunes

First, CPS CAN come in and take children the same day. But, this is in cases where the child is (a) Injured or (b) in great danger. It does happen and it happens with police.

But in general, this is how the system works:
1) Calls come into CPS from everywhere.
2) The calls are triaged, such that the ones with the greatest possibility for harm to a child are taken and investigated within 24 hours.
3) The others calls are ranked by liklihood of harm to the child and investigated accordingly.
4) For cases where harm is not likely to be immediate or where there are not obvious signs, investiagtions by the social workers can take weeks because they talk to everyone in the child's lives; and they actually try and get the bio-parents help so the children are not taken.
5) When all else fails under this triage system, the children are removed.....
6) Children may also be removed if the bio-parents are not doing what they are supposed to do to improve the situation; if the abuser has not left the home; if the situations do not improve, etc.

In the majority of cases, the families are NOT new to CPS; because the workers have been investigating when the children are taken.

By the time TPR (termination of parental rights) happens, the workers have already looked for other family members that could take the children. So, by the time a child is "legally free" in the foster care system, there is NO other family member that is available or acceptable for adopting the child.

Lori A

Good question, hard to answer. I have heard that most times CPS does not swoop in but you and I both know that some of the particular problems they deem acceptable are bogus accusations to begin with.

I know of a mother who needed 2 more weeks to secure the last leg of her to do list. It was securing a home. She had to wait for the other tenants to move out and clean the place up. Her rights were terminated and she never saw her children again. She died a few months ago. She was not the reason the children were removed.

opedial

I don't like this question. It makes my head think too much!

As a previous foster parent, we knew the system and we knew the flaws in the system. There were children we saw who definitely could stay with their parents rather than be in foster care with the right support, but they still stayed in foster care, and we have seen children go home who we think should have stayed in foster care.

You have situation in some provinces/states, where they are family first, which is good in theory; however, in this case they are often not working in prevention and stability but rather in crisis. In this type of system I have seen them try to put families back together AFTER crisis, but rarely working in prevention.

So back to your question, how can I be sure? Well, we knew the problems, so we made sure to read the full social history. It was beyond clear from the social history that the children for sure had to be adopted and needed permanent parents in their lives. They are not allowed to see their first parents. I have also made attempts to meet the first mother but she cancelled our meeting.

So we have done what we could, but in the end, we always wonder if we had a system that was more preventative supportive in nature rather then crisis driven, perhaps we could see a change in how many even come up for adoption through foster care.

The reason I don't like to think about this question, because my biggest fear is that deep down if my children would have been better off in their first family if the abuse/neglect had subsided earlier. I know we are not to blame, but what if the system failed this family? Well that we will never know, so I really don't like to think about it. It makes me sad. I am glad you asked it, but it still makes me sad.

Flying Monkey #073177

AHEM! First off.. Hey Ashley? shut up already.

Ok rant ended.

I will assume you mean me when you say BS and foster care. And YES it was a BS reason. I was offered plenty of help until his foster parents announced they would like to adopt him then, surprise surprise, all the help stopped. Even though SS destroyed my family and stole my child I am still an avid supporter of foster care adoptions. The trick is to buck the system a bit and DEMAND some form of contact with the natural family. Be it emails, phone calls or unmonitored meetings within the safety of the social worker's office. You will never know a person's situation until you have talked to them first hand. I could see the guilt on their faces when I met them. They were told outright lies about me and my situation and until they heard my story from my mouth they had nothing else to go on. They didn't even know his middle name or that he was baptized in my family church. Hell they didn't even know he was born prematurely or that he was on a sleep apnea monitor until he was 15 months. They thought his asthma was from me smoking in the house, that was utter BS! Another thing I would suggest is not asking to adopt a foster child until they are legally free to be adopted. Social workers will halt any support to the natural family as soon as you do and it is not fair. They get kick backs for each adoption they facilitate and nothing for reunification within the natural family. Just some food for thought.

â™¥â™¥Mum To Superkidsâ™¥â™¥

I know there are kids in the foster system that shouldn't be. It drives me wild that while some children are taken for BS reasons, ie, a lack of services for parents, other children are languishing in environments saturated with abuse, neglect, drug abuse, violence and pain.

My advice? Go through the foster system and keep your eyes open. Get to know the child's parents and family, get a feel for them, try to see how the children interact with them. Listen to the kids when they tell you things. If something seems wrong, then it probably is.
Then be prepared to fight the system. Harass your case worker, pull your support worker into it, write letters to anyone who will listen.

There are so many kids in need, in so many ways. If you truly want to become a parent to them it's possible to do it in an ethical and moral way. I would say always listen to your instincts.

Carnie C

Let's face it -- CPS doesn't swoop in today and put your child on the market tomorrow. Nparents receive multiple opportunities to rectify the issues that caused the original placement. Only after they've failed to do that, time and time again, does CPS move for a TPR.

I am very confident that any child I would choose to adopt from CPS was not wrongfully ripped from their mother's arms.

corcoranfaire

I think you have to be proactive with any foster child you have to be sure that they are not a victim of CPS and need another home. I make sure I ask questions of lots of people, read the court and medical files, go to all the court dates, do everything I can to know as much as I can about the first family, and push to get copies of everything. I want to be comfortable with the decision to foster adopt and be able to tell our little one as much as I can about her parents.

I have been watching the few kids I know in care and so far I haven't seen any children's rights terminated inappropriately, but have already seen several instances of children going back to their parents for a short time and the abuse/neglect continues, so they come back to foster care.

However, maybe reading the court file on your friends case will help you see more. Sometimes they give a different view than you have been led to believe. Maybe she is still dating the guy who has been bad with her kids, maybe she is doing drugs and kept having dirty test, or maybe she didn't listen to the judge or follow his orders. Or maybe she did everything right, had a bad attorney, bad judge, or just felt so guilty about things she did do that she gave up. The judges I have seen bend over backwards to make sure that the children are reunited with their parents, giving them chances over and over. I am sure they aren't all like that, but the more that you can ask, know, and see for yourself, the more confident you will be that the best intersts of the child were served.

Enter Your Message or Comment

User Name:
User Email:
Post a comment: