Foster adoption is what my husband and I are doing.

In short, we are adopting a child(ren) from the system who are currently in foster care, but those children that have reached the level of adoption in their "permanency plan".

A permanency plan is decided by the social services representatives...a team of caseworkers, their supervisors, the state in which the child is in custody, as well as doctors, psychiatrists/psychologists, etc.

A lot of the child's permanency plan has to do with their birth parent(s) being able to complete a designated program or set of steps to basically earn the right to parent them back.

They may have to do one thing, or several things...such as drug rehab in combination with disolving an abusive relationship, and things like that.

They may also have to set up visits that are supervised so the children's caseworker can observe the family dynamic.

If these steps to re-unify the child with their birth parent(s) fails, then the plan moves to adoption, and the state seeks to terminate the parental rights of the birth parents.

Once in an adoptive placement, the children are staffed and their bios are sent to hopeful adoptive parents to view. If they are interested, they say yes, and then wait and hope that they are the family selected to start visitation with the child.

The process beyond that varies from state to state, but I hope this clarifies what a foster adoption (or foster to adopt as it's more commonly called) is, vs. foster parenting.

Until Tonight,
Storm