We are thinking of adopting out of foster care a 3 to 6 year old.?

Question

We are talking about adopting an older child like 3 to 6 yrs old. I have a son that is 5 yrs old and he is excited about the idea. Has anyone ever adopted out of foster care in TEXAS and is it expensive? We would love to give a child a good home.

Answer 1

Hi Momkolton,

Thank you for considering adopting from foster care.  That is where the need is the greatest.  There is little to no cost and you can get a tax refund if you do spend any of your own money.  If there are any medical expenses for the child, those will be covered as well.

Texas has the following requirements:

Basic Requirements : Must be at least 21 years of age.

Can be married or single.

Be willing to attend pre-service training and participate in a home study.

Be willing to foster children with backgrounds of abuse and neglect.

Undergo a criminal background check.

All prospective foster and adoptive parents attend approximately ten weeks of pre-service training known as PRIDE (Parents Resource for Information Development Education).

Contact Information: call 1-800-233-3405.

You should be aware that it is usually not possible to adopt out of age order of the children you already have.  In other words, you currently have a 5 year old.  Your foster child should be younger than that.  

Once you complete your homestudy, it should not take long at all for a child to be placed in your home.  There are already over 140,000 children waiting in our country now.  I suggest contacting the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services (DFPS) for specific information.  (see sources)  Be sure to read up on adoptee issues before you adopt so you will be well prepared to parent your adopted child which will be different from your biological child.  Thanks for asking & Good luck to your family!

julie j

reunited adoptee

Answer 2

First of all, congratulations on even thinking about taking this step. You will not regret it.  My husband and I are licensed foster parents in Texas and we also have a 2.5 year old bio son.  The two fosters we have are now 2 and 1!  Now while I do not recommend getting kids this close together in age, I must say that we could not have asked for better kids.  They are so loving and we are just having a ball with them.  While we would like to adopt them, they will probably go back to their first family, who want them back desperately.  That being said, I encourage you to go through a private agency if time is a factor.  I have worked with CPS and, while they have been great with us, are a little overloaded as far as cases go.  We work with an adoption liason who keeps us up to speed of who is available and sends us updates usually every two weeks.  My biggest piece of advice is to be patient.  I do not like to wait for anything but the system does not always work as fast as you would like it to.

Good luck and God bless!

Answer 3

you're such a lovely person to do this! god bless!

Answer 4

Julie J gave a pretty darn good answer for you... always remember that if you adopted child and your biological child get into a fight, some good ammo for the adopted child is "Well they definately WANTED me!!!" I had an adopted friend that used that on his sister and it worked every time!!!