Monday, October 22, 2012

Foster Care Bummer - Our Girls Can't Babysit For Us

We told our youth group a few Wednesdays ago about our plans to become foster-to-adopt parents.  They were excited and thought it was pretty cool.  After we wrapped up official youth group time, some of our girls came over to us with gleeful expressions on their faces.  The conversation went something like this:

Starla:  We will come babysit for you alllll the time.
Steph:  Yeah, this is so great, you can count on us.
Me:  Hold on girls.  I'm afraid the rules say our babysitters have to be 21 years old, have 3 years experience working with children, complete a background check, babysitter application and interview with our agency, provide references and be trained on HIPAA policies. Oh, also infant and child CPR and First Aid certification is recommended...

Ok I didn't go into that much detail in the actual conversation.  I mostly just told them that they don't meet the criteria and it broke my heart to have to tell them this.  We've had a posse of young ladies chomping at the bit to babysit for us whenever the time came and now that it has...they can't.   I'm truly bummed about this.  I love my girls but as long as the children in our home are foster children, we have to follow the rules.  

Starla had a good idea: "Well, we could come over and babysit WITH you.  We can play with the kids while you cook dinner or something."

I bet that can be arranged.  :-)   Provided they fill out the less involved "frequent visitor" paperwork...

In the meantime we'll be on the hunt for the unlikely combination of babysitter criteria listed above.  Hmm.

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