The Interest Meeting
It was 2017. After some google searching about foster care and several sermons that mentioned the topic, I decided on a whim to attend an interest meeting led by a local licensing agency.
We had been married just under a year. My husband worked at Ernst & Young, one of the top public accounting firms in the world. It was "busy season" and he worked 60 - 80 hours every week. (In other words, I had a lot of alone time.)
It was one of those lonely evenings when I got off work (at a normal time) that I listened to the local licensing agency talk about the foster care needs in our area. The statistics were staggering. The presenter hit me with a statement that went something like this:
"Care for them now so you're not afraid of them later."
She talked about how children in foster care are more likely to get involved with drugs, homelessness, crime, trafficking, and more. She talked about how every child needs a champion.
Someone to rally their cause.
To genuinely care about them.
To not be worried about getting too attached (because that's the point).
To just love them.
To help them not become a statistic and give them hope.
I couldn't help but think... if I was a child in foster care, what would I want someone to do for me? If I was a victim of abuse or neglect, what would I have needed?
The answer was crystal clear. I would've needed someone to step up. To love me. To care about me. To give me a safe place to stay and three meals a day. To pray for me. To remember my birthday. I would have wanted someone to take the leap and stand in the gap.
As someone who believes wholeheartedly that every life matters and every person has value, my actions needed to match my beliefs. Foster care was an avenue for us to live out our beliefs.
I didn't know what my next step would be. Sitting on the sideline, however, was no longer an option.
I came home from that meeting with a packet of paperwork and an overwhelming sense that foster care would somehow become part of our story.
The Season of Conversations
As passionate as I became about foster care, I couldn't dive in without the full support and participation of my amazing husband. He knew foster care was "a good thing to do," but like most people, he had his reservations about the whole thing. The foster care system doesn't exactly have a stellar reputation. Who could blame him?
I was ready to dive in. He wasn't.
I was like a toddler whose mom wouldn't buy the candy... I whined. I wanted to get licensed so badly. Did we live in a tiny apartment? Yes. Did he have a brutal, unrelenting work schedule? Sure did. Was my job flexible? Not in the slightest. Did we have a support group in this new town as newly weds? Not yet. You see where this is going.
Logistically, foster care would've been just about impossible for us in 2017. Most importantly, it wasn't time yet because we weren't on the same page.
I decided to take my foot off the gas and trust that if it was meant to be, it would happen at some point.
It took two years of heartfelt conversations with each other and with friends, buying a home, two job changes and a lot of prayer before we began the licensing process in 2019.
The Philly Cheesesteak Dinner
It was a casual dinner over Philly cheesesteaks that sparked the beginning of our licensing process.
Sometime during our two-year season of foster care conversations, we moved to a house about thirty minutes out from town. That move led us to a new church home. When we told the pastor that my husband was from outside of Philadelphia, he asked if we had been to the local cheesesteak spot. It was run by some folks from Philly (which was very surprising for our small town in South Carolina).
This cheesesteak spot was a "taste of home" for my husband, who moved 11 hours south to my home state when we got married. This particular evening we ate with our closest friends, who we met through this new church home as well.
During dinner, foster care came up. We talked about the needs around us and what we thought we should do about it. We couldn't sit on the sidelines when children in our communities were in need of our care. We had the space and we could make the time. We had the energy. We knew we'd have a support system through our church and the foster parents we were already blessed to know.
The idea of going through the licensing process together felt less intimidating. It felt achievable. We basically made pinky promises over Philly cheesesteaks that we would all take the next step and pursue licensure. It's amazing how having the right community can be a catalyst for taking new steps. And that's what happened!
The Licensing Process
If there was one phrase that got us through the licensing process, it was this: just take the next step.
If you've ever heard a foster parent talk about the licensing process, it sounds pretty intimidating.
Forms.
Home Studies.
Fire inspections.
Background checks.
Fingerprints.
More forms.
Did I mention more forms?
For us, the licensing process wasn't as bad as people made it seem. Did it take a while? Yes. Did we sign our names approximately 85 times? Yes. Did we have to drive to Timbuktu for some trainings? Sure did. However, it's all about your expectations. If you hold the process with open hands and simply do the next thing, eventually you'll have a state license in hand. And in the meantime, you can read books about foster care, visit blogs like this one, prepare your home and do all the research you can to help you feel more confident in the journey.
Tip: Think of the licensing process like pregnancy. Having a newborn would be significantly more overwhelming if the baby was handed to you the same day you found out you were pregnant. Just like pregnancy, view the licensing period (which may take many months) as a time of active preparation.
It took 7 or 8 months to get licensed, from our very first agency meeting until our license was mailed. We probably could've finished in 5 or 6 months, but we had two lengthy delays.
The first delay was my husband's medical exam (which was a licensing requirement). He had not been to a primary care physician since moving south. Since he didn't have an established physician, we had to find a doctor and schedule a new patient visit. Many offices in our town aren't taking new patients so we had to settle for an office thirty minutes away - and their first availability was three months out. That slowed us down.
The second delay was that, toward the end of the process, we failed our fire inspection. It was a silly mistake on our part. We were supposed to make sure our smoke detectors were less than 10 years old (a totally reasonable request). Before the inspection, we checked some of our smoke detectors, but not all of them - and it turns out that only half of our smoke detectors were replaced before we moved in. The fire inspector only comes to our area once a month, so we had to wait another month for a re-inspection after we replaced the handful of outdated alarms.
Other than those few hiccups, it was a pretty seamless process! If you have the right motives for pursuing foster care, and you have the ability to follow directions and fill out paperwork correctly, you should not be intimidated by the licensing process. Throw any expectation of efficiency and speed out the window, and just take the next step.
The only form that I vividly remember struggling to complete was a "child factors checklist." It was basically a long list of troubling behaviors and mental and physical handicaps. You had to select which ones you were willing and able to accommodate in your home. Some of the items on the list included: aggression, cruelty toward animals, fire setting, lying, obscene language, running away, being sexually provocative with adults, stealing, autism diagnosis, anxiety disorders, eating disorders, heart conditions, learning disabilities, Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, and much more. Having very little life experience with many of these items, it was really hard to decide what to "check yes" to. We decided to really heir on the side of caution and thought once we had some more experience, we could revise the checklist.
With a license in hand in 2019, we were ready to begin accepting children into our home for respite care. Our license covered long-term care, respite care and emergency care. Respite care was what we felt best about. This was just the beginning of an eye-opening journey that we will never forget or regret.
Learn about why we pursued respite care specifically in the post: "Our Journey: Why We Chose Respite Care."
Emily
Respite Foster Mom