The beginning

At the beginning of the year we made contact with our local childrens aid society. We had a group meeting with other interested parents to learn about the process of becoming a foster parent. Homestudy, Foster Parenting courses (PRIDE), Criminal checks, Fire Inspections, Insurance etc. We were naive as to how long the process would take from initial contact to final completion. At this point we are 6 months into the process. My advice is to make sure you understand that this process will take some time. We started getting a little discouraged three months into it when it became clear it would take alot longer than we thought. We were so excited about helping children in need and then it just seemed to be dragging on. We had to change our mindset that we were in this for the long haul.
The Pride courses are really valuable, although they do lack some depth. The key is they give you a really good overview into looking at this process through the eyes of the child. It really helps you internalize that the main goal is reunifying children and their parents. It is about building stronger families. The homestudy consisted of some psychological/behavioral testing, couple interviews, individual interviews, interviews with your children, reference checks etc. They told us to expect it would be intrusive. Is it? Sure if you are not comfortable with sharing your life and being open. Some people are not and feel it is no one's business but there own. Both my husband and I are fairly open books and in fact I probably share too much on occassion. Bottom line my perspective was none of us is perfect- childrens aid does not expect that. So all in all the process requires lots of commitment- hours of your time for training, interviews, inspections but in the end wouldn't you expect that kind of depth if your own child was placed in a foster home? Don't get me wrong- on occassion I was complaining when is this going to be over with?