Foster care adoption?

Question

Does anyone know if you adopt a child through DCF can you get any medical records on the birth parents? And if so do you know how to go about doing this? I am in Florida

Answer 1

Don't count on getting anything from the parents.  DCF will give you whatever they have, tho.   They understand what you are doing is to protect the child.

I have a suggestion.  When i was a foster parent, i didn't have any luck getting assigned a child that i could adopt.  The system was very confused and confusing.  When i signed up for Emergency Care ( where you pick up the child at the hospital or police station at 2am)  i had a wonderful experience.  The theory is that you are going to care for this child for 24 hours until mom gets out of jail.  In most cases this doesn't happen.  The child gets moved into a permanent foster home.  Unless you want to keep that child in your house.   So you get to see a steam of kids go thru your house.  When you see your future foster child, stop the merry-go-round.  Say that you will allow "this" child to stay.  DCF will be thrilled   You will probably have to remove yourself from the Emergency list , tho , unless you have room for more kids.

I took in a 5 year old whose parents both went to jail for a long time.  THe sweetest boy you'd ever meet. But he was so sad.  Also an 11 month old whose mom had fractured his skull.  Nice and bubbly and happy.  I sure was worried about having a baby with a fractured skull- i'm not a doctor or nurse.  It was ok.

Good luck.

Answer 2

That depends on a lot of things.

The state:  Some states are open records states.  In our state, they legally HAVE to give us every single piece of paper the state has ever had regarding our future child.  Some states don't have that, and might hide information on purpose.

The parents:  If they're not talking (or if they're running from the law, refuse to get in touch, etc.), there's not much anyone can do about it.

The caseworker:  If s/he is lazy, there's not much anyone can do about that, either.

Answer 3

we are adopting thru foster care and when the relinquishment was being done the parents were asked a multitude of medical questions to which they all answered no!

An amazing family who has NO history ANYWHERE of heart / kidney / strokes / any type of normal disease.

Answer 4

The adoption worker should give you all the medical records on your child. Our adoption was finial last week, we had all the records for our son about a month before the adoption was final. We are also in Florida and we had an excellent worker. Talk to your worker.