A Letter From Brad & Andrea

Dear Friends and Family,

Some of you are aware how challenging the last five years have been for Brad and I. We are about to embark on a brand new chapter of our lives and feel now is the right time to share where we are going.

More than 5 years ago we began our journey to start our own family and have run into a few forks in our path. We are still pursuing options to have our own children, but this year decided to also pursue adoption routes. A friend provided us information about adopting children out of the foster care system, who are looking for permanent homes. After reviewing what this journey entails, we knew in our hearts this was a path for us. In May, we started a 10 week class and a process required in order to work toward licensing. (You have to have your foster care license if you want to adopt kids out of foster care, even if you don’t full time foster.)

Throughout this process, we have learned even more about the needs of kids in foster care and have made a life changing decision. We have decided that while we would ultimately like to adopt kids out of foster care, we are going to go the full route and become foster parents. The reason that we decided to “publicly” share this information is that once we have our license and have children placed with us, the information about these kids and their situations is private and we will be unable to discuss their parents or their situations.

Knowing that it would be quite strange to start seeing us with unfamiliar children, and knowing their placement in our homes will drive decisions we make, we wanted to be upfront about what we are about to do. Additionally, once children are placed with us, we can’t even really confirm that they are in foster care with us. We certainly didn’t know anything about this process when we first started and had (and still have) questions to ask about it. We thought this would be a way to provide the people in our lives with the opportunity to ask any questions about the journey before we are basically in information “lock down”. Because this is an important and sensitive subject that greatly affects the lives of those around us, our goal is for no questions in this process to be off limits.

We know that this will be a very challenging and life changing decision, but feel this is the right time for us to be able to provide others with support and kids with a safe haven while their families work through their life struggles.

Until now, we have kept this close to us, only sharing with a few members of our family and friends. This was not intended to leave out the other important people of our life, but this is a very sensitive and intimate journey and we wanted to limit information until we decided exactly where we were going. We welcome your questions and hope that sharing this with you will help explain some crazy things the Dellits might be doing in the future. :)

Brad and Andrea

Here’s some information to start out:

• We finish our 10 week PS-MAPP class at the end of July, which is required for licensing.
• It could take up to a few months after class ends to receive our license.
• We are seeking to primarily foster kids in the 0-3 age range. We will also consider kids of older ages, depending on the situation.
• We are required to have 3 home visits with our licensing worker, 1 of which we have already accomplished.
• There are requirements and changes we must make and adhere to in our home in order to be licensed, which we are currently working on.
• The goal of the foster care system is different today than what some of you may be familiar with. The goal now is to work on reunification of children with their birth parents whenever possible. We as foster parents will take part in the plan, mentoring and helping the birth parents where appropriate to aid in this reunification process.
• Our personal goal is to be able to adopt kids that are not able to be reunited with their families.