Pre-Service Classes Completed (sort of)

    This week we finished our required pre-service training with Belmont County and received the forms that we will need to fill out so that Jobs and Family Services (JFS) can begin to do our home-study.  I guess technically we still have one more class to take since we missed one when we went away for a week to celebrate our 20^th wedding anniversary, but we plan to make that up in Zanesville this Thursday.  Either way, we have the forms and we spent some time this weekend filling them out.  Today my wife was to either drop the forms off at JFS or (if time was short) drop them in the mail.  Our hope is that we can complete the home-study before the end of June when we will be moving to Stark County (more on that in a future post).  If the home-study is complete, then all that “should” need to happen after we move is to have a visit or two from the Stark County JFS to add and addendum to bring it up-to-date with our new house, employer, etc.  Even though we’ve been taking these classes for six or seven weeks, suddenly it seems more real.  Once the home-study is done we will be certified to adopt and licensed as foster parents.  This is both frightening and exiting at the same time.  A new adventure begins.

    As I said, we have completed six or seven weeks of pre-service classes with several other couples from around Belmont County.  At first, I wanted to be sort of anonymous, just for people to know my name but not much about me but as we got to know the other couples in the class, that began to change.  For those of you who haven’t been through this process before (and even though we’ve adopted before, that was thirteen years ago and this was new to us too), getting a home-study through the county requires that you attend twelve three hour pre-service training classes.  Each county has their own way of doing this and you can attend anywhere in the state at your convenience as the curriculum is the same.  Belmont County was convenient to us (except for our anniversary) so we attended there every Tuesday and Thursday for the last seven weeks (there was an ‘extra’ week because we skipped a Thursday during Easter week).  When we started, we weren’t really thinking very hard about being foster parents but were primarily thinking about adding a child or two to our family through adoption.  As the weeks and the classed rolled on however, both my wife and I began to think that becoming foster parents might just be something that we would consider. 

    

    As I understand it, being licensed as a foster parent isn’t a requirement and, in some places, we might not have been required to attend those specific classes but that isn’t how Belmont County does things.  What they have seen over the years are too many adoptive parents who adopt a child and then, for a variety of reasons, find themselves wishing they had been licensed as foster parents.  Likewise, they have seen many foster parents who care for children who become available for adoption, and then have to return to the classes to get permission to adopt.  Their solution is simply to require that everyone take all of the classes.  Of course, having done so, everyone is permitted to do as they wish, no one is required to become a foster parent or an adoptive parent if they don’t want to, but under this system no additional classes are needed if you change your mind later.

    I began the pre-service classes with every intention of remaining sort of anonymous but, after spending six hours a week for six weeks together we began to become friends with the couples (and one single) who were in class with us.  I was initially reluctant to let anyone know that I am a pastor.  Not because I was doing anything embarrassing, but simply because I find that sometimes I get treated differently and I had hoped that by remaining somewhat anonymous, at least for the duration of the class, I might ‘fit in’ and not get any kind of special treatment.  I don’t think I needed to worry.  Everyone in our class was great.  We are all quite different from one another but we all have a desire to make life better for children in crisis.  Another reason for remaining somewhat anonymous was simply the size or our county and the size of our small towns.  So far, no one really knows that we are headed down this road.  As I mentioned earlier, we were hoping to minimize the number of questions raised by our parents until we, at least, had the home-study completed.  In our small town there are several folks who, although they don’t know our parents directly, are connected to people who do.  We know that once this news (and in our village this would be news) is out, it won’t be long until our parents find out.  It won't be much longer anyway since I asked my brother to be one of our references for our home-study.  I asked him not to tell our parents, but at this point I assume that we tell our family before June is over.