foster care

I completely forgot to write an update on our foster care and adoption progress. A lot has on gone one recently. If you are new to this blog, here is my past posts on foster care and adoption.

First of all, we have been approved as foster parents! We got approved last November. I should have written about this earlier, but there are some reasons why we were not overly excited. Yes, we are approved officially, but the child guidance center told us they wouldn’t give us any kids to foster until Kiko turns three. Kiko is 21 months old now, so we have more than a year before they even consider us as candidates. On top of that, they require the follow-up “training”; 10 days of  training in three months! I really fought to get out of the training, because the rule book says that foster parents with biological children are exempt of this training. We have Kiko so we should not have to go through the additional training, but the child guidance center decided that we need it because “Kiko is too young” and we are not experienced enough as parents. Sigh.

I found this extremely unfair. Foster parents with biological children who are in middle school do not have to go though the long training days. Why? Because they are more experienced! In some sense, perhaps you can say so but considering this training consists of 10 full days of diaper changing and feeding newborns less than a year old, I believe I should be exempt of this. I still change diapers everyday.

On top of that, they want us to schedule 10 full days within three months, because of the insurance they have to buy while we are in training. The social worker at the Child guidance center and I literally went back and forth negotiating the details of this training for an entire month. Neither Andy nor I can do 10 days in three months, together. We have Kiko, work, church and other responsibilities to take care of, and we would have to find some baby sitter for Kiko while we are in training.

After many phone calls, both parties agreed that we do one training per month for over the 10-month period. This makes sense, considering that we won’t be considered as working foster parents until Kiko turns three. Also the length of time were reduced to just morning instead of full days.

I would have been more excited about the training if it is somehow beneficial or if I could spend some quality time with the children but in reality operating under the irritating gaze of our trainers destroys any redeeming aspect to these 10 days. It’s a shame to because Andy and I had both planned to volunteer at the orphanage but with the way the “senpai” handle the system it makes it very difficult to get excited about this process We’ve done two trainings so far, and all we did was to sit and hold babies all while being told that these babies were “broken babies not like normal children”.

I understand that they need some kind of training for hopeful foster parents. But I wish it be meaningful and beneficial at least. What do you think? How would you improve the training program if it were you?

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