Foster Parents - Highland Park,IL

My family has done foster care for over 20 years and it always amazes me the things foster and adoptive parents are required to do to be allowed the right to care for these children, while birth parents need only enjoy each other's company long enough to concieve to have the right to the same children.

I truely believe that Interpersonal Communication and Parenting classes should be required classes in school right along side Math and English. A little education and information would go along way to preventing these children from having to be taken away in the first place.

Because we have evolved into a legal system that give rights to everyone but the innocent. :(

I have to agree! The system we have was formed before we understood the long lasting ramifications of severing ties on a child so young.

I personally think that the child should be allowed to spend time with the bio parents and the foster family for a period of time with a slow transfer of time spent going to bio mom. And it should be done over several months. This gives bio mom a chance to get help from the foster parents and if mom relapses then the transfer can just stop or bio-mom can just say, "you know, I can't handle this" and step down if need be.

I hope there's a good explanation because it's something I've wondered and a reason I'm hesitant to become a foster parent. It's heartbreaking.

As an adoptive parent, I feel for you and your foster child. It breaks my heart to think of the pain and confusion that a small child must feel with this sort of disruption.

Parents make mistakes. They work the program and get their kids back, if they don't they get their rights terminated. That's what being a foster parent is. Helping a family while the kids need care until they go back home. The foster parents are not going to be the family unless parental rights are terminated. They should teach this in the foster parent classes. Kids can be moved from foster home to foster home every month if the worker feels like it.

The parent should have had visitation over the 3 years the child was in foster care. It is not good for the kids to not have lots of contact with their parents. They need to see them, spend time with them, keep that relationship going. It is as you describe when the workers forget to make sure that child feels comfortable with the parents. It is also part of the foster parents job to be a mentor to the parents and help them to reach their goal of having their children reunited with them.

The parent has evidently fulfilled the courts required steps and they can have their children home again. How happy the parents must be. I can only hope the person has fully learned and understands the steps they must keep doing to keep their children in their home.

My daughter has 7 children.

The oldest has been in foster care for nearly 3 years. He is currently being adopted by my ex and his wonderful wife. They also have guardianship of our second grandson.

We have the next 2 grand-kids. We have legal guardianship of them.

The next 2 were adopted by their foster family and we see them all the time. My daughter is allowed to visit them also. She had her rights terminated but had an open adoption.

She had a baby in September in rehab. The baby is doing very well and she is learning many skills and much needed patience. Hopefully she'll come out and be able to stay clean and be able to provide a safe and loving home to her baby. If she takes us and her dad to court to terminate the guardianship papers she will most likely win. The adoptions are of course final. She will have to pay court costs and attorney fees and I don't think she will ever have the funds to do that.

The best interest of the child is the reasoning we used to obtain custody of my granddaughter. This is the second time I've had her in my care, but this time I wanted to make it more permament for the child - so she wasn't drug back and forth thru the system! And I hope to keep this custody for her stability and such - but sometimes you just don't know w/the courts!

Kicker here is - kinship care rarely gets any funds like foster parents do! Tho, that's ok for me as it lets me raise/take care of this child w/o all the extra folks hanging over me! Oh - and most of us that do this will rarely see any child support either!

To add onto this the foster children age out of the system at 18 and are just thrown into this horrible world. It seems that the court only sees what is on paper and does not see these kids as humans with feelings as well.

Because we have a legal system where a child "belongs" to a maximum of two adults. Children are property. We don't believe in sharing children. We don't believe in kids having more than one or two parents.

I would love it if the legal system changed to allow us to legally acknowledge all kinds of chosen/non-biological family. Right now the only ways to create legal family is through marriage and adoption.

What if I want to co-parent with a sibling and his/her children? Or legally acknowledge our household, which is two families with six children, all of the parents acting as "parents" over all the children? Our legal system doesn't leave any room for this. Nor does it leave any room for a bio-parent to continue co-parenting with a foster parent. Either they take the kids from the foster parents, or they give their children up forever.

I understand some of the First Nations legal systems allow for multiple set of parents. If anyone has any experience with how that works, I'd love to hear from you.

Thanks.

It's not right, I'm with you 100%... they need to change a lot of the laws they have in the social service realm. Have you contacted your congressman/woman? We have to be proactive to get the laws changed... why if a bio parent, gives their rights up on one kid they are allowed to keep having babies...

I have not been a foster parent or a social worker, I've heard horror stories...