Orientation

On Thursday, March 26th, Jen and I went to Cerritos College to attend the Fost-Adopt orientation. We arrived about forty minutes early, so we had lunch in the cafeteria. We went into the classroom about fifteen minutes early, and were surprised to see that most of the chairs had already been filled. We were lucky to find the last two chairs sitting together at a table.

Once seated, the LA County Department of Family & Children Services worker greeted us and had us sign in. This was important because they used the sign-in sheets to generate the certificate that signified the completion of the orientation, which in turn is needed to attend the PS-MAPP classes (more on that later). When 12:00 hit, there were approximately thirty people that had come for orientation, which, according to the social worker, was a large class. The first half of the orientation was by LA County Department of Family & Children Services (DFCS), and the second half was by the California Department of Social Services (CDSS), Community Care Licensing division (CCL).

German (pronounced Her-mahn) was the social worker for LA County, and was extremely professional, informative, and friendly. He talked us through and hour and a half’s worth of exactly how the LA County DFCS works, how and when children are taken from their homes and placed in foster care, how they work with families to make the child’s home safe so that they can return to their family, and how they know that it’s time to terminate the parental rights, making the child eligible for adoption. He gave us statistics, such as last month (February 2009), DFCS worked with 33,000 children. This is all just in LA County only! At any given time, there are 500-800 children eligible for adoption. That just shows how well the county works with the families to get them into shape and equipped for raising their own children correctly. German also gave us the steps for how to become a “Resource Family” to foster these kids. The fastest he’s ever seen someone become licensed and ready to foster was two months. Jen and I hope to fall into the 2-4 month range.

The first step in the Resource Family process is the orientation. Check. The second step, countywise, is to take the county-run PS-MAPP classes. PS-MAPP stands for Permanence and Safety – Model Approach to Partnerships in Parenting, which in plain English, is parenting classes. It’s a 33-hour, 6-week course that deals with the basics of parenting and how to deal with behavior/emotional/medical/adjustment problems that foster parents face when taking in a child. We are excited to take these classes and absorb everything they teach us. The trick is getting into a class. In order for the class to commence, a minimum of twenty people need to be signed up, but no more than twenty-five can be admitted. It’s on a first-come, first-serve basis, so we must make sure that we’re super early to the first meeting, and not to forget our orientation completion certificate! Jen and I signed up for the Monday/Wednesday 6-9pm classes at El Camino College in Torrance, which start on April 6th. Hopefully enough people will sign up so that class can start. German told us that that’s not usually a problem.

Congruent to the PS-MAPP classes there are things that we must do for the state in order to get our license. First, we have to fill out the foster family application, which in actuality are several applications in one. The second half of the orientation was run by LaSherrie from the CDSS. She went through what the application looks like, how to fill it out correctly, and where to send it in. All this information is also available on their website: www.ccld.ca.gov. Along with filling out and sending in our application, we have to get a Live Scan background check done, get certified in first aid and CPR, have a physical done, and ready our home for the home study. This includes baby-proofing, setting up the bedroom to accommodate a child (or children), and making sure that everything is up to their safety standards. We must find out all the emergency shut-off for the gas, water & electricity, and get the numbers for the utilities and police. It sounds like a lot when they’re listing all this off, but it’s really not. Plus it’s stuff that should be done anyway.

Tonight we start filling out our application. We will attend CPR and first aid training at the YMCA in late April. The ball has begun rolling!