u/External-Good-3807

Hello,

I am not sure if this is the right group, but it would be great to get a social workers opinion on this

My partner and I (both in our mid-late 30s) have decided we do not want biological kids but would like to foster and ideally foster to adopt. We would be very open to fostering first.

We live in a 100sqm house (we own the house) in a small town in Pennsylvania. We currently have 2 bedrooms but are planning on converting one room into a third bedroom.

We have savings. My partner is self employed and makes around 75k a year. He mainly works from home (going out for the occasional event or in person meeting, he’s a health insurance broker). I am German and will be moving over on a K1 visa. The plan is then, obviously, to get married as soon as possible, but it will be a few months before my adjustment of status goes through. In the past I have been self employed and, in Europe, made around 100-120k a year (assuming that it will be higher in the US because salaries are higher). I have always worked from home and planning to continue working from home. Both of us are very flexible when it comes to our work schedules. Also, in the first 6-8 months I would be at home and not working since I would wait for my adjustment of status to go through.

None of us has any red flags in their bio or past from what I can see. We have a network of social workers and psychologists in our family. Both of us are planning to join the big brother/big sister program as we believe it would be a great learning experience. I am not going into this naively and would like to be as prepared as possible, so I think the trauma informed classes are a great preparation but would also absolutely love to get suggestions on other things I/we can do to prepare as best as possible.

I do have two questions specifically:

1. Would it make sense to already try and do the home study before my adjustment of status or could that ruin or chances later on and lead to a direct refusal?
2. The one red flag I see is that we have 5 dogs and 3 cats. All are incredibly well behaved and sociable, they do super well with kids and I believe they could actually be a positive influence on kids rather than a negative one. We of course have baby crates etc and enough rooms to separate the pets from us and the children. Coming from a bit of a troubled family myself I know that I would have absolutely loved having multiple pets in our home, however I do know that not everyone feels the same way and it could be seen as a a negative element. So my question would be, could or would this likely be a reason for refusal?

For some more context, we are not specifically looking at adopting infants. We are open to adopting children and sibling groups (up to 3 with our current set up) up to the pre-teen/teen ages and are also very open to adopting children with “milder” disabilities. I hope I won’t get criticised for the wording and I’m sure there are better ways to say this, but by milder I mean manageable with eventually 2 parents working (on flexible schedules being self employed).

I would love to get honest feedback on our situation and potential hurdles we could face as well as getting any input that could help us be the best future (foster) parents possible.

We are relatively new to this, even though we have thought about it for a while, so forgive me if I worded some things awkwardly or missed some potential obvious things.

Hello,

My partner and I (both in our mid-late 30s) have decided we do not want biological kids but would like to foster and ideally foster to adopt. We would be very open to fostering first.

We live in a 100sqm house (we own the house) in a small town in Pennsylvania. We currently have 2 bedrooms but are planning on converting one room into a third bedroom.

We have savings. My partner is self employed and makes around 75k a year. He mainly works from home (going out for the occasional event or in person meeting, he’s a health insurance broker). I am German and will be moving over on a K1 visa. The plan is then, obviously, to get married as soon as possible, but it will be a few months before my adjustment of status goes through. In the past I have been self employed and, in Europe, made around 100-120k a year (assuming that it will be higher in the US because salaries are higher). I have always worked from home and planning to continue working from home. Both of us are very flexible when it comes to our work schedules. Also, in the first 6-8 months I would be at home and not working since I would wait for my adjustment of status to go through.

None of us has any red flags in their bio or past from what I can see. We have a network of social workers and psychologists in our family. Both of us are planning to join the big brother/big sister program as we believe it would be a great learning experience. I am not going into this naively and would like to be as prepared as possible, so I think the trauma informed classes are a great preparation but would also absolutely love to get suggestions on other things I/we can do to prepare as best as possible.

I do have two questions specifically:

1. Would it make sense to already try and do the home study before my adjustment of status or could that ruin or chances later on and lead to a direct refusal?
2. The one red flag I see is that we have 5 dogs and 3 cats. All are incredibly well behaved and sociable, they do super well with kids and I believe they could actually be a positive influence on kids rather than a negative one. We of course have baby crates etc and enough rooms to separate the pets from us and the children. Coming from a bit of a troubled family myself I know that I would have absolutely loved having multiple pets in our home, however I do know that not everyone feels the same way and it could be seen as a a negative element. So my question would be, could or would this likely be a reason for refusal?

For some more context, we are not specifically looking at adopting infants. We are open to adopting children and sibling groups (up to 3 with our current set up) up to the pre-teen/teen ages and are also very open to adopting children with “milder” disabilities. I hope I won’t get criticised for the wording and I’m sure there are better ways to say this, but by milder I mean manageable with eventually 2 parents working (on flexible schedules being self employed).

I would love to get honest feedback on our situation and potential hurdles we could face as well as getting any input that could help us be the best future (foster) parents possible.

We are relatively new to this, even though we have thought about it for a while, so forgive me if I worded some things awkwardly or missed some potential obvious things.

Hello,

My partner and I (both in our mid-late 30s) have decided we do not want biological kids but would like to foster and ideally foster to adopt. We would be very open to fostering first.

We live in a 100sqm house (we own the house) in a small town in Pennsylvania. We currently have 2 bedrooms but are planning on converting one room into a third bedroom.

We have savings. My partner is self employed and makes around 75k a year. He mainly works from home (going out for the occasional event or in person meeting, he’s a health insurance broker). I am German and will be moving over on a K1 visa. The plan is then, obviously, to get married as soon as possible, but it will be a few months before my adjustment of status goes through. In the past I have been self employed and, in Europe, made around 100-120k a year (assuming that it will be higher in the US because salaries are higher). I have always worked from home and planning to continue working from home. Both of us are very flexible when it comes to our work schedules. Also, in the first 6-8 months I would be at home and not working since I would wait for my adjustment of status to go through.

None of us has any red flags in their bio or past from what I can see. We have a network of social workers and psychologists in our family. Both of us are planning to join the big brother/big sister program as we believe it would be a great learning experience. I am not going into this naively and would like to be as prepared as possible, so I think the trauma informed classes are a great preparation but would also absolutely love to get suggestions on other things I/we can do to prepare as best as possible.

I do have two questions specifically:

1. Would it make sense to already try and do the home study before my adjustment of status or could that ruin or chances later on and lead to a direct refusal?
2. The one red flag I see is that we have 5 dogs and 3 cats. All are incredibly well behaved and sociable, they do super well with kids and I believe they could actually be a positive influence on kids rather than a negative one. We of course have baby crates etc and enough rooms to separate the pets from us and the children. Coming from a bit of a troubled family myself I know that I would have absolutely loved having multiple pets in our home, however I do know that not everyone feels the same way and it could be seen as a a negative element. So my question would be, could or would this likely be a reason for refusal?

For some more context, we are not specifically looking at adopting infants. We are open to adopting children and sibling groups (up to 3 with our current set up) up to the pre-teen/teen ages and are also very open to adopting children with “milder” disabilities. I hope I won’t get criticised for the wording and I’m sure there are better ways to say this, but by milder I mean manageable with eventually 2 parents working (on flexible schedules being self employed).

I would love to get honest feedback on our situation and potential hurdles we could face as well as getting any input that could help us be the best future (foster) parents possible.

We are relatively new to this, even though we have thought about it for a while, so forgive me if I worded some things awkwardly or missed some potential obvious things.