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Considering adopting

Back to Eliana. She fit in so nicely in our family and we are fully prepared to care for her into adulthood.

That said, there's a bunch of political agency duristiction BS going on behind the scenes that will affect her and about 300 other kids in care.

Here's the background info. There are currently 3 foster care agencies in the city. The regular children's aide society that deals with all the non native children. And two agencies dealing with native children.

How it works with the natives is that they have designated treaty areas and each agency covers a number of different communities in those areas.

Recently the two native agencies began fighting over jurisdiction and who is actually going to care for the families and children who fall under their umbrella. It ended up in court and the outcome was that approximately 300 children under the agency we foster for have to be transferred to the other agency.

For us, that means a few different scenarios.

1. The other agency comes in and takes her and moves her to one of their homes. (They are short on homes.)

2. We could sign up to be foster parents with that agency and drop the one we're with. (Apparently they won't take non native foster parents so that's unlikely)

3. The agency we are with could sign an agreement with the other agency called an interagency service agreement or ISA for short to agree to watch over the other agency's files for them. This is still up in the air as the other agency was willing to do this and then changed their minds.

So we have a mess. The two agencies are squabbling over duristiction and 300 children are caught in the middle and are at risk of being removed from their current placements just before Christmas and stuck in homes wherever they can find.

As bad as it is for us, others have it worse. Friends of ours at camp have 4 foster children. 2 from each agency who have been with them for years. They are fully committed to caring for all 4 into adulthood but may be put in a position of having to choose between which children they want to keep. Imagine being in the position of having to stand your 4 children in a line and picking which two you want to keep.

I talk to myself to get an expert opinion.
 
Well, it saddens me to say that after 2 years, things didn't work out with elianna and she just wasn't happy and was making life difficult for everyone. We were fully prepared to raise her to adulthood but the stress was becoming more than anyone could handle. So we gave the agency notice and they had ten days to find her a new home.

We originally began our journey of being foster parents with intent to adopt. Eventually we had our daughter placed with us and when she became adoptable, we did. We had said that we would only do respite but took in elianna as an emergency. Then we agreed to keep her long-term. Now that she's going, we have decided to take a break from fostering as our children are getting older. Eventually we will have some time to ourselves, something we have never had.
 
Thanks. This wasn't an easy decision. She was moved yesterday. It never gets easy. We've had a few kids come and go and trust me. It never gets easier to see them leave knowing that someone you loved and cared for as your own is gone and you'll never see them again. How do you grieve the living?
 
NorthernRedneck said:
...How do you grieve the living?
Click to expand...
You don't, you can't. This is one of those things where you pray she will find a family that 'fits' her better and that she 'fits' better. We can love children but maybe we don't fully understand them, or fulfill their needs, or provide for something that is lacking in their heart, even if we love them. Don't grieve for her, hope she finds what she needs.
 
So it's time for an update. Our adopted daughter turned 18 in December which officially makes her an adult. She has always been attracted to the "wrong crowd" at school as she just wants yo fit in. This led to her skipping a lot and practically failed a whole semester. We got her into a special school where they work on booklets one course at a time. The problem with this school is that while at first she was doing good and actually completed 5 courses last year to this year she's been basically using it as a hangout with her new friends she met at the school. Well, most of the kids who go to this school are from lower income homes. She met up with this group and girls and saw that they are allowed to do pretty much whatever they want whenever they want. You can see where this is going........

After Christmas things were getting difficult with our adopted daughter to the point where we finally said we weren't driving her anymore to her friends if her room isn't clean and she doesn't change her attitude as she had been snapping at everyone and there were several instances of different things being taken in the house. We had a big blow up last week after I asked her to empty the dishwasher while she was frantically trying to clean her room so we'd still drive her. She blew up and packed a bag and left. She had been staying with her friends partying it up I'm assuming. They had all these plans that they were going to get a bigger apartment and jobs etc. Well, she messaged yesterday to see what she has to do in order to come home. We have all laid down the law with her.
 
You got that right. She's going through a rebellious stage right now. We took the tough love approach. Told her we don't support her decisions and laid everything out on the table. Told her point blank that we weren't "kicking her out", this was her decision etc etc but Told her exactly what she has been doing lately to try to turn everyone against each other in the house. Told her that if she comes home she WILL be changing her attitude and that she will now be doing her schooling at home at the kitchen table where she can focus on her work because play time is over. Welcome to adulting 101.

My wife dropped off some of her clothes to her this week. She started exploring applying for a job getting an apartment etc and quickly realized that maybe home wasn't so bad after all and our expectations were realistic as she messaged mom yesterday saying she was homesick. They're going to meet today and have a talk. It's a "come to jesus" type meeting. We aren't bending. This is her intervention. So to speak. Not just with my wife and I but the other kids have all had their say.
 
Sorry your whole family is going thru this, because it clearly affects everyone in the household. I think you are on the right path with her. Good luck
 
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