Utah Foster Care Foundation
Life felt "normal" today. My emotions are in back in check and it is business as usual here at the Beck house. The husband and I had our 3rd of 7 date nights that have been/will be spent here this month...
...taking classes to become licensed foster parents.
Now here's a blog post I never anticipated writing.
Up until about 6 years ago I knew almost nothing about the foster care system. Then I met my friend Nancy when we were both called to work together as Cub Masters in the scouting program. Nancy and her husband had one biological daughter. They wanted one more child and decided to go the foster care route to possibly adopt. When I met Nancy she had not only adopted 1 child but had welcomed 8 children into her home and had adopted or was in the process of adopting all of them (Nancy moved away a couple of years ago but I think they've added 2 more children to their family through fostering to adopt). Nancy taught me a lot about the foster care system and since then we have come in contact with several families who have fostered and adopted children through foster care.
Until a few months ago Kevin and I had never considered becoming foster parents. We have a pretty full house as it is :). But last Fall the subject came up and we both felt like maybe we should look into it. We talked to the kids and they were all on board. I think Jackson summed it up best when he said, "We've been really blessed as a family so it would be good to give back".
When we met with the case worker and discussed what ages and number of kids we would be willing to take our parameters were pretty limited. We considered the ages and needs of our kids and felt like taking only one child at a time would be best and we are only willing to take a certain age range as well. Many foster children come in sibling groups and a lot of them are older than what we will take so the case worker made it sound like they may not have a child that fits our parameters. Despite that information Kevin and I decided to go ahead and get licensed any way and if there is a child we can help we are happy to do it. If not, at least we made ourselves available. I'll blog more about the classes later in the month.
