Understanding Foster Care

When children can’t safely live at home, the court gives temporary legal possession to Child Protective Services (CPS). CPS assigns a case worker to the children and then the immediate goal is to find a safe home for the children to live while the biological parents work to get their rights back. These temporary places could be:

Foster Family Homes
Respite Home

In 2017 alone, over 19,000 children were removed from their unsafe homes in Texas, resulting in about 28,000 kids in foster care currently. Just in the greater San Antonio area there are about 4,400 foster children. But there are not enough homes in Bexar County for these precious kids. So what happens? One of every five children (20%) are sent away, breaking up the family even further.

So there's the great need. We need more safe, loving homes to place these kids.

Foster care is meant to be temporary until the parents demonstrate they can safely care for their children. However, it can become permanent if the court determines parental rights should be terminated and the children become legally free for adoption.

Foster parents are typically the natural choice for the permanency provided through adoption. But it's an uncertain road that you must be prepared for.