Do you get to pick your child when you are going to foster?

Answer 1

No, you don't get to directly pick. You can say state an age range and how many kids you can care for, gender, race, medical conditions.

When you get a call, you'll get a very short list of information, and you may have very little time to decide whether to take the placement or not, especially if you get a call for a new shelter late at night. It's important that if you do take the placement, you commit to the child rather than "trying them out" ... the latter causes a lot of emotional damage because it causes them to be bounced around a lot.

You should have a list of questions ready to ask the worker when they call

• Age, gender
• race
• known abuse history
• why they are coming into care
• drug/alcohol?
• medical conditions (including hiv, cancer, etc)
• known psychological conditions, diagnosis, medication.
• behaviors; ask for specific examples. If the worker says "sexually acting out" ask for specifics about what they did; there's a big difference between pantsing someone during recess and more serious sexual perpetrating.

you should be prepared to hear "I don't know" and understand that there's only so much that the worker knows, or can tell you.