After a few weeks we recieved an email with our CARRT representative.
What does this mean?
Well basically they send you more information about fostering/adopting tailored to the requirements for your county. They also send you a list of approved agencies that work with the county to help you start the process.
They answer all the questions you may have and on occasion they do send you back to.. adopt us kids website.
They also sent us PDF files of different agencies around our area that are approved by the county. The list basically has all the information of the agency to include websites, numbers, contact emails, and what type of placements, resources they have.
Most of the list we saw were Christian based, also some had requirements for example they wanted only married couples or same faith based couples as the agency.
This is where for us was frustrating, insulting and scary… See we aren’t Christian and we aren’t going to say what faith we are. Just know that we follow God and do practice a religion that is considered monotheistic.
So those agencies were not for us. The ones that only wanted married couples were also crossed off our list. We are legally married by court and faith. The way we live our lives we chose to not exclude anyone based on their marital status, sexuality status or faith. So we agreed that any organization that discriminates anyone based on status that makes no sense to us we will not go to. This narrows our list down from 8 full pages to basically 2 almost 3 pages.
There was 3 agencies that truly were open too all Faith’s, sexuality status and didn’t care if you were married or not. So from there we visited each websites and reviewed their information.
Finally we ended picking 1 agency.
Hannah’s Childrens Homes was the one for us. They have 3 offices for our county so we picked the closest one (still about 40 miles away).
Hannah’s website is small but they have everything you need to know to start off. I love their name because is is biblical but focus on what fostering/adoption is about. The caring and believing that children are blessings from God.
They even have a quote on there website to further explain why they picked Hannah:
“Like Hannah noted in the bible’s book of Samuel our company feels children are a blessing from God. Hannah’s strives to find amazing families that have the room in their heart and home to make a child feel special and loved.”
If that doesn’t warm up your heart and show you that they only care for the childrens welfare and not about social or religious rules.. So this was our first pick!
They have their inquiry form, links to resources for fostering/adopting parents. Explanation of the program, parenting tips and many other useful links that one will need.
So now the scary part… We wanted to make sure this was the one agency and to make sure that this is a journey that we could take on.
It took a few weeks and we both talked about it together, with family and friends and separately with family and friends. In the end we came to the conclusion that yes we wanted to do this.
Once the inquiry was submitted the stress, nervousness and fear kicked in..
This is our experience and it might be Similar to others but in the end it is our own journey.
Just remember one thing:
DO NOT PANIC
1sttimefosters 