National Foster Care Awareness Month

I  am thankful for friends that remind me of national months that involve us!  Found out today that May is National Foster Care Awareness Month.  Look at that, with only a few days left in May I made the deadline to put a little post out there in honor of it! 

So here are some facts to shine some light about the foster care system for you to chew on:

• More than 400,000 children and youth under 18 are in the foster care system. (Yikes!)
• About 104,200 are available for adoption right now, they are simply waiting to be chosen.
• Every year, approximately 26,200 young people leave the foster care system without lifelong families – most at age 18.
• For most states, there are 2x as many children than there are available foster families.
• There are many more children in need of temporary care than there are foster parents available.
• Not only do these children need foster parents, but if you are not in the position to foster a child you can become a mentor or a respite care provider (take care of children temporarily to give foster parents a break) for a child in care without as much needed responsibility yet can make a lifetime impact.
• There are two ways to foster: through your county or through private agencies.  All children go through the county however when placements cannot be found children may be filtered to private agencies in order to find open foster family placements.
• Foster parents received reimbursement from the state to offset the cost of temporarily caring for a child in their care.  So fostering a child will cost you monetarily nothing after reimbursement!
• Children entering foster care spend on average 2 years in care.
• The average age of children in care is 9 years old.
• While most children live in foster families, 15% live in institutions like group homes mostly due to not having enough foster homes available.
• There are slightly more boys in care than girls, but only slightly (2-4% more).
• Many large sibling groups come into care and due to limited foster placements are generally split up into separate homes due to space.
• Only half of teens in care graduate with a high school diploma.
• In 2011, children coming into care racially were: 44% white, 23% Black, 21% Hispanic, and 11% other or multi-racial.

Since I'm posting a little tidbit about foster care I thought I would quickly give a snippet update of where we are in the process.  We have completed our part of the home study process for some time now.  Everything needed from us has been submitted for the past 4 or so weeks.  Our social worker has collected everything and is typing up our official home study.  When she is done she will send everything to her supervisor who will go through it with a fine tooth comb and either ask for it to be revised or will then approve it and send it to the State of Ohio to then approve.  At that point we will receive an official license from the state certifying us.  Our county then requires us to take one last class which is a 6-hour Foster Parent 101 course.  In that class a portion is spent on becoming CPR/First Aid certified and the other portion is the nitty gritty of what is allowed/not allowed, how we navigate the system, who is who in the line up of workers and their specific jobs, the full process, children privacy rules, and other regulations and such.  As you leave that class your home is considered then open and you can begin to get placement calls immediately.  We recently (as in yesterday) found out the next one is June 1st.  We were told there is a slight possibility we could be able to get all approval by then however more than likely it will not be enough time as each tier of personnel are always busy.  We are keeping our fingers crossed (and toes!) that we can get quick approval and be able to take the course otherwise the next one would be sometime in August or September.  We cannot take the course without state approval and we cannot take in any placements without that last course.  So here's to hoping the individuals involved with our licensing will act quickly, unfortunately quickly is not usually in the systems dictionary.