first day of adoption classes

Tonight was the first day of foster/adoption classes. Totally fascinating, though I'm not necessarily sure in the way that they intended. When I pulled up, a gay couple was looking for the agency as well and I thought "Yippee! A gay couple feels comfortable with this agency! I've chosen correctly!" Overall, I'm still feeling good with having gone with this agency (although the place is a full hour drive--very unpleasant for the girl who insists on riding her bike everywhere). The guy who did the agency orientation emphasized the fact that they were not a faith-based agency, and that the founders did that in part so that they could be open to all kinds of families. That made me happy.

I know I should be reflecting on all of the deep lessons I learned, but I'll talk about that in a minute. First, I want to reflect on the people (by that, I mean that I want to gossip). It was such a fascinating group of people. Some people seemed really interesting, some seemed kind of clueless (like the woman who didn't seem to realize that her husband would have to take classes, too--when the person who was running the class emphasized that point, she said something about what a great guy and comedian he was, and then suggested that maybe he could do the classes over the phone, because he was a truck driver. Reality check in aisle four!) There was a lovely family (I mean, literally, lovely--five of the most beautiful people I've seen in a family group. I hope those children don't grow up ugly, because they totally won't fit in as adults). There were a lot of people who wanted babies and some people who wanted siblings for their current children. I wanted to start lecturing and quoting from all of my adoption books on the perils of adopting kids who were the same age as the bios, but it's hardly polite. Besides, I got wide-eyed looks of horror from the experienced parents when I said I wanted a teenage girl. I felt sort of dorky, because it was just intros and I don't like to talk a lot during intros so I think I sounded rather lame in my teenage girl reasoning. Whatever. The adoption coordinator actually sort of recommended against teenagers during her spiel, emphasizing the fact that they've probably been through a lot of placements and that can make things more difficult. That kind of has me worried--not that I am altered in my teenage girl resolve, but I hope that she won't be resistant to placing a teenager with me if that's what I want. I may change my mind, but I doubt it at this point--I've thought about this a lot, and I'm almost certain that's the age group I want to go with. The adoption coordinator also emphasized that the kids on the photolistings are often there for a reason--they're hard to place, with more difficult behavioral records. She said that the kids who were listed with "Moderate" problems were often closer to "Severe". As I've read more on special needs adoption, I've gotten better at photolisting interpretation (i.e. "needs a strong father figure" probably means that the kid will pretty much reject the mother) and I've begun to realize how many kids have problems I'm just not up to dealing with. Still, I wanted to raise my hand and sort of beg on behalf of those chldren. Of course, I don't know their histories, but so many seem to have potential. I totally get why the adoption coordinator would want to do that (and I think that her position is not uncommon)--people fall in love with a picture and a description, take on more than they can handle, disrupt the adoption, and the kid ends up in another broken home. If I were the adoption coordinator, I would probably say the same thing. All the same, it seems sad. I guess depressing is just something I'm going to have to get used to in this biz.

Okay, so things I actually learned tonight:
-apparently, subsidies are pretty automatic for those who qualify. It is more a matter of negotiating how much. This makes me happy, since Texas offers free college tuition to all kids who get subsidies. I know that my fantasy of seeing a child off to college may be unrealistic, but it's nice to know that it will be paid for if it proves a realistic dream. I was also really interested to hear the sorts of things that one could negotiate for as part of the subsidy. In particular, I was really thrilled to learn that you could try to get additional funds for private school if you thought the kid could particularly benefit from it. I'm a big fan of Montessori education, and I think that it's an approach that would work really well for a lot of children coming out of the foster care system. I've been all in a tizzy trying to figure out how on earth I would afford it if I thought a kid really could use it. If I could get a subsidy increase, though, that would really help.
-23 kids are currently sleeping on cots in CPS offices in my region because there is no room for them in foster care homes or shelters. Not particularly relevant information, so we'll just file it under "depressing". Also, maybe, "call to action".
-Texas recently changed foster laws so that you can't have more than six kids in the house, total, if you foster, and then only if both parents are home. This also doesn't affect me, but it sort of sucked for the seemingly cool family who was enthused about taking in big sibling groups but had three bios at home.

I knew a lot of things that they were talking about, just from doing so much reading. Actually, I'm not sure I would have totally followed the presentation if I hadn't done a lot of reasearch ahead of time. I wonder what the next class will be like (and who will be there) . . .