whoa... new people are reading this

Hi new people! 

A lovely blogger re-posted (re-blogged? I don't understand all this) a thing (article? post? essay?) I wrote a long while back for offbeat families. Because of that some new people have become interested in our weird family-making process. 

I forget that while we talk personally with our closest family and friends, all you internet people don't actually hear from me! 

So let's go back to November. In November we were told about an actual, real proposal. We picked up the proposal package in December and read the whole thing. 

This child was older- almost a teenager. We'll call this child "Jo" cause it's gender neutral and we're all about privacy. I had asked some very specific questions about past any past abuse or trauma that Jo might have experienced, about current manifestations of mental health issues and about pre-natal exposure history and assessments. The first red flag was that our worker nor Jo's worker could answer some of these questions. But most of the answers were given a fairly positive spin. 

We picked up the proposal package (a very large binder with medical records, government records, assessments and family history dating back to Jo's birth) and read it very carefully all the way through. The first thing we noticed is that Jo's real, full name was used and we knew the neighbourhood Jo lived in and the school Jo went to. This concerned us because we didn't have to show any ID to get the package and the receptionist who gave us the binder had never met us. We could have been anyone and suddenly had a lot of personal information about a vulnerable young person. 

As we read through all the information we realised that a lot of the questions we had asked had very different answers than what the worker had told us. We also saw over the years where Jo was continually failed and not provided with therapy and counselling because workers and caregivers changed and issues weren't followed up on. 

It broke our hearts but we realised that Jo might have more special needs than we are currently able to handle. We told our social worker we wouldn't proceed with this proposal and she was very understanding. 

So we got to thinking (as we do from time to time) about what it was about adopting Jo that didn't feel right. We both thought that we would have pursued this further if there was some kind of guaranteed assistance for providing therapy for Jo (we don't have a whole lot of money and private therapy can cost over $100 a session). We thought we might have pursued it if we felt like Jo's guardianship worker had known more about Jo's past so that we could have made more informed decisions about helping Jo in the future. Eventually we decided that Jo was a person we could imagine fostering but not adopting due to the legal and financial implications. 

Then we had an Aha! moment. We called our social worker and asked what she thought about us applying to become foster parents and she thought we'd make great foster parents and told us who to call for information. 

So we are still approved to adopt (but no more proposals have come our way). We have taken some time to really consider fostering and all the implications of that choice. We are pursuing more information. We are also considering making some changes to our living arrangement to save money and live in a situation where we would have more community and support around us. 

As always, we're learning and learning and learning. Who knows where we'll end up but we're still enjoying the ride. Also our darling, bonny, braw God-son was born last fall so we are getting plenty of fun time with him and feeling all the love.

PS... I just found the button to justify this post and it looks ten-times nicer and cleaner and more professional. I told you I know nothing about blogging.