First Meeting-check

Okay, so I attended the first Foster Parent informational meeting. There were about 20 folks in attendance. Several couples, the rest women. Mostly about my age, a few younger. I was kind of surprised, I thought there would not be that many people there. I have to say that I was quite impressed with the organization of the whole event. Perfect power-point presentation, lots of information in brightly illustrated folders, name tags, snacks, tear-jerking dvd at the end. Very politically correct and governmental. I must admit that if we chose to do this, the county has it all "goin-on." They have every base covered. Not a penny comes out of pocket from us and I can attend all of the classes myself leaving Marty home to mind the kids. He just has to be fingerprinted, that's it. The only thing we have to do here at home is make sure the smoke detectors are working and put up the pool fence.

I just do not know if my heart is strong enough for all of this. We have decided if we do it to only take kids younger than Nicky. He is 4.5 years old. That is the age where there is the greatest number of kids who get put into Foster care anyway, although many of them are sibling groups, which we are not going to have. The thought of having a "baby" here for a few months and the nurturing and bonding that will occur, then having to surrender that child back to an unpredictable home just makes my stomach turn. The primary goal of the Foster care system is to re-unite children with their bio-families. I understand this concept, but....here's where I am not so good, most of these kids just go in and out of the system their whole childhoods. It seems like the system is working for the parents and not the for the kids.

We still have not decided what to do. I do think I would benefit from the training. It is 3 hours a week for 8 weeks and it is not far from our home. Maybe I will go ahead and do the training and see where it leads. Not a huge time commitment. After all is said and done, I may have more clarity. Any thoughts would be appreciated.