Only a few people experience both the beauty of reunification and adoption through foster care. Today we chat with Cait about her family’s choice to foster and their experience with reunification and adoption.
3 Girls Before the Ink Dried
Cait and her partner found out they were licensed to foster when they received an email. The email titled, “3 girls need placement today” changed their lives. The girls shortly arrived, ages 8, 6, and 2. They came with just the clothes they were wearing.
Initially, Cait and her partner wanted a legally-free sibling set for a closed adoption. However, after the WA training, their perspective changed and they became foster-first pro reunification minded.
Maintaining Hope
The three half-sisters all shared a father and were raised together. When they first came, their plan could have gone reunification or termination. Since reunification is always the main goal of foster care, Cait and her partner worked to help that plan. They became close with the girl’s biological moms and some extended family. Literally, they chatted with every day with their moms. Cait recounts,
We were hopeful and fearful that their dad would get clean (they had already been in care and reunified once before) but in Aug 2018 Brooke’s mom voluntarily relinquished and their father’s rights were terminated in court.
Rejoicing in Reunification
Foster care is meant to offer support to parents who are struggling. Reunification is the goal after parents have gotten the resources they need to safely take care of their children. While Cait and her partner only legally adopted 2 of the 3 sisters. The third is still a part of their lives.
One of my favorite memories was our first camping trip. Stella came too since she spends some weekends with us since reunifying. We took the ferry to orcas island which was pretty ambitious for a first trip.
Their family grew not just by two little girls but by their whole family.
Real Talk
We asked Cait about her best experience and she gushed about their therapist.
It’s the best thing we’ve ever done. We also found an amazing therapist who has helped us learn to parent trauma survivors in real-time.
Cait is refreshingly candid and spoke about when the right time to foster is. Is there ever a right time? She shared,
Don’t wait until your ready; get stable and then start the process. You can always say ‘no’ and you’re not a bad person if you’re not up for siblings or teens or medically fragile – this was the hardest thing for us to think through. But someone wise told us it was okay to start on the “beginner” level.
In Conclusion
In conclusion, we want to thank Cait and her family for sharing their story about reunification and adoption through foster care. For those interested in adopting check out our adoption calculator here for information on cost.
