We officially passed our home inspection yesterday. This was our 2nd inspection- we didn’t pass the first one, despite having a walk through and asking what felt like a million questions, because our hot tub wasn’t “disconnected from power”. No one really seemed to know exactly what that meant. It was empty, covered, and locked, but still connected to the breaker. Now, thanks to a kind friend, the breaker was completely removed. So we passed. Finally.
Next up- our agency will submit everything to the state, the state will review it, hopefully not ask for anything else, and issue our license. This can take up to 30 days, but usually is faster. Then, we will be officially open for a placement.
In case you were wondering, here are all the other things we’ve done so far:
6 weeks of classes, plus roughly 30 hours of online trainings; CPR/First Aid certification; a 20 page application; 5 recommendations from friends and family; a 4 page “family support plan”; physicians statements including a list of medications, all medical diagnosis, and purpose of any medication; we did a 1.5 hour interview together, individual hour long interviews, and have talked about our plans for discipline more times than I can count (we have never planned to use physical punishment- but we’ve had to sign multiple papers and state this several times out loud. I promise, no physical punishment!). We also had to provide copies of our teaching and counseling certificates, fingerprint clearance cards, drivers licenses, marriage license, car registrations, car insurance, list of all the places we’ve lived in the past 10 years, list of all employment in the past 10 years, and explanation of any gaps of even a day. There is probably more, but honestly I can't remember.
It has been trying at times, especially not passing the home inspection the first time, and I know it’s not going to get easier anytime soon. There have been a few tears and minor meltdowns, but being so close feels remarkably good.
More than once during this process I thought about all the hoops we’ve had to jump through to foster a child. And even more, how if even part of this energy were put into families at risk that fewer children would need foster homes. Instead of having foster families fill out 4 different versions of a family support plan, put supports in homes- have a worker spend 3-4 hours developing a support plan with a parent who needs help, provide free and easily accessible parenting courses to anyone who wants them, provide addiction support and services for free for everyone- not just people who are court ordered or have successfully navigated the system to finally get insurance. I could go on- our system is horribly broken and doesn’t provide any meaningful prevention services. I’m excited to foster and hopefully adopt, and I think foster care will always be important and needed, I just hope some day it's needed less because we’ve worked to identify and reduce risk factors.
I know there are many more sleepless nights ahead, but soon those nights will be from a small child and not just stress and anxiety (I’m sure we’ll still have those nights too… just more sleepless nights all around).
