We are Approved! Now what?!

I thought it was time for an update! Lot's has happened in the last month with our foster parenting process. The exciting news is we are officially Foster Parents! Check out our official certificate! The last step we needed to take was have a transfer meeting with the Swift Current Resource worker. During this process we have had a social worker in Regina. She has travelled to see us a few times and we have chatted on the phone.

During the transfer meeting, our social worker from Regina and the social worker from Swift Current came to our house and we reviewed some policies we had read before, as well as showed the new social worker our house. The kids loved showing off their rooms and were excited to show her the foster child's room. We received a accordion style portfolio that we can use to track expenses and documents we might want to keep track of that belong to the child.

One interesting piece of information we learned at our transfer meeting was that 90-95% of the children in care in Swift Current are not from Swift Current and come from surrounding communities such as Moose Jaw, Saskatoon and Regina. We were told this is because of the high demand for available foster homes. She shared with us sometimes when a child needs a placement they can't always keep the child in their community because there are no available foster homes so they utilize any available foster home. This was something I did not know and surprised me. When I worked in child care in Saskatoon there was a high demand of foster homes and group homes, so this part didn't surprise me. What surprised me was that the province is now really working together to place children. My past experiences had been when I tried to find placements for youth we usually utilized a group home because there were very few foster homes that accepted youth. The few times that I tried to place a youth out of Saskatoon (because they had family in another city and wanted to be close to them) it was very hard to get the other ministry to accept that child because they didn't want to fill their placements with children or youth not from their community. In other words; cities and communities were very territorial over their foster homes or group homes. It looks like they have seen progress in this area and for that I am glad. With this being said; I know this will come with its own challenges. Jeff and I will have to be cautious about visits and the distance we are able to travel. Since Jeff and I are continuing with our jobs, we will have to make sure everyone is on the same page with travel and visit expectations.

When we had our transfer meeting our social worker said she already had a child in mind for us and was asking when we would be ready to start. That was on March 11, days before Covid-19 changed everything. I can still remember so clearly, making the call to the Saskatchewan Foster Family Association putting in our application to foster. This was in August 2019. Thinking about March 2020 and starting fostering seemed ages away and no one was thinking a pandemic would take over the world. Well, here we are- now in the middle of a global pandemic, waiting and hanging tight. Our fostering depends on someone helping us with child care and with this being so up in the air right now who knows what will happen. We can't figure out the logistics of this right now; things are changing hourly and its impossible to plan.

Jeff and I are a little confused about the timing with all this. We are trying to discern what God has planned for us in this foster journey right now. When God placed fostering on our hearts, the timing was unexpected. We always had plans to foster, but we had anticipated it to be years down the road. God put it on our hearts earlier than expected; and we are now trying to discern why He did that; in light of Covid-19. God knew we would have a global pandemic in the same week we would meet and make plans to have our first placement. Why would He do this? Are we needed now more than ever? Or does it take a Global Pandemic to tell the Powell's we heard God wrong and shouldn't be foster parents? These are thoughts we have had and prayers we prayed last night together. Please join us and praying about this, and if God sends you a message about it please let me know.

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Here's our new prayer requests

1. Please pray for all those working in the health care systems and emergency services during this stressful and foreign time. Pray for peace and calm for everyone and that our communities continue to work and support one another in a safe way.

2. Please pray for direction for us and next steps. We don't know how to navigate this in light of what is going on. We don't know how to make decisions or how to read God's plan in such a crazy time. We don't know how God is wanting to use us in this.