We are now 18 months into our foster care journey. We started at the beginning of May 2019. Our very first placement that came to our house the day after we were licensed are still with us today. It was meant to be. These kids were meant to be in our family and we are truly are happy that we get to spend our lives together even though it is a crazy/sad/busy ride sometimes. Here is an update of what has been going on in our foster care world since February 2020. These are the stories that I haven't told anywhere else, but since this is our family journal I am going to share things here so that we have it written down.
In Feb we were still doing weekly visits with Bio Mom. We had changed from twice a week visits to once a week visits which was SO helpful to me with our busy schedule. They started doing visits at parks in March to help keep everyone safer since this was at the beginning of Covid. Many foster families stopped doing visits in person for a while, but our visits never changed and I am glad the kids had the chance to spend that time with their mom. At the beginning of May we had court scheduled to decide permanency with the kids case. The question on the table was were they going to keep trying to get the kids back to bio mom or were we going to change the plan to adoption? That court hearing ended up being postponed due to Covid and rescheduled for June. June came and that court hearing was postponed again until July.
Finally in July we had the court hearing and it was our first virtual hearing. At that hearing bio mom did not decide to relinquish her parental rights and so DCFS moved to take the case to trial to terminate bio mom's parental rights. In Utah they give bio parents about a year to finish a list of requirements that they need to do in order to get their children back in their care. If they don't finish their list or at least try to finish it they move the case to adoption. Then most commonly the foster parents will adopt the children. Our bio mom did not really complete anything on her list at the year mark which was in May. The court was now wanting to move the case to an adoption.
The next hearing was a pre-trial hearing. They were getting prepared for the trial and giving bio mom one last chance to relinquish her rights instead of having them terminated at court. Bio mom decided to take this opportunity to relinquish her rights. This was an act of love from her and such a devastating moment for her. She truly loves these kids SO much! A few weeks after she relinquished her rights the children had their final visit with her. They met at a splash pad. They played for a few hours and then I joined them with the caseworker. Together we fed the kids some yummy food and explained to them that they would no longer be having visits with their mom. We explained that she loved them so much but just wasn't able to take care of them at this time. I shared my love for them and how special it was to me that they were going to stay at our house and be a part of our family. They took things fairly well at the park. Honestly I feel like by this point they had mourned the loss of leaving their mom many months ago. They had lived with us for 14 months. It was normal to them and they are too young to understand the bigger picture of the situation. But what a moment to have for McKay and I! I felt so much stress, sadness, and yet peace during these weeks as we started to explain to them about adoption and how they were going to stay with us and not see their mom anymore. It was definitely an adjustment for all of us.
Once bio mom had relinquished her rights we only had one of their fathers left who also needed/needs to relinquish his parental rights. He had been a distant part throughout the whole case, but still needed to have his moment in court. As we have moved on to his portion of the court case he decided to not relinquish his parental rights. So they set a Trial date (just like bio mom), but at the pre-trial he decided that he would like to relinquish his rights. But he forgot to bring the paperwork that he needed to sign to the court date... so another date had to be set. The next court date he happened to not be available that day (thanks to Covid restrictions) so we have set the next court date in 2.5 weeks. Someday right?!
Someday he will hopefully relinquish his rights and we will be able to move forward with an adoption date. Our lawyer needs 8-10 weeks to prep the adoption paperwork once the parents have relinquished so we are most likely looking at an adoption date in 2021.
It has been a long journey, but thankfully a fairly smooth one (even with 8 kids in tow). We haven't really had any worries in over a year that the kids might leave our house. We have been planning our future with them for quite some time and it is exciting to be closer to the end of our foster journey. We never anticipated for things to go the direction that they did, but it seems fairly common with sibling groups to end up being adopted. It has been wonderful for them to get to stay with us and to not have to have any children leave our home. We have decided to change their names (atleast their first names) and have started calling them by their new names. It definitely took a month or 2 for us all to get used to the new names, but they love them and are doing well adjusting. We decided unofficially change their names early so that they could be using their new names when school started. It turned out well and everyone has been so supportive of the new names. We really appreciate that! We will introduce their new names on here when we adopt them officially. I am excited and LOVE their names :)
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