[Rathji]

I have been a foster parent for 3 years, finally about to adopt our first placement that we got when she was 5 days old.

I really don't worry so much about the money aspect, and we haven't been getting paid the same way for a while, so these numbers are really rough.

For a non-special needs child, I think the foster parent fee is about $1200 a month. This amount goes up depending on how long you have been a foster parent, having completed the sets of training courses or if you have special skills that are needed (like being an RN). I think the first step up was almost double your foster parent fee. at 24/7, you get paid like $0.50 an hour at first, then it moves up to over $1 an hour.

You also get maintenance, it to cover living expenses, which is another $1200 base, depending on the age. You also get extra money for kids under 2 for diapers etc, vacations, recreation funds. Schooling and medical stuff is all covered as well, except for some unusual cases.

I know some foster parents, with high needs kids, who make more than $100k a year for 2 kids, before expenses. In both cases, it is a full time job for one parent and the second parent works an extremely flexible job to help out.

Its good pay, but you are also living in a fish bowl. Everything you do is under examination. You often have drivers, social workers, etc in your house 1 or 2 times a week. It can get excessive.

On top of all that, you have a foster kid for a year, or 2, or more, and become attached to it. It is like your child. Suddenly the phone rings and you have 2 hours notice before the social worker will be bringing her back to her parents. That's pretty rough, of course.

Then you find out, as the kid is being picked up by the social worker, that one of the parents , who is still on trial for beating/raping/killing one of your foster child's siblings, is now back living in the house so there will be unsupervised time with the child.

Of course, the good side is you get to raise a child in a safe environment, having them know that you love them and that despite whatever brutal or inhumane crap happened before, they are safe now. They can be happy and not be worried about the next beating or worse that comes from the hands of the people who should be the ones keeping them safe.

You get to break the cycle in their life and allow them to grow up with a normal life and normal parents and one day have kids of their own. Hopefully, if you do it right, they treat their kids right and you will realize that you have made a huge difference for the lives of so many people just because you took them into your home and made sure they got the assistance they needed to have a decent life.

That's the good paying part about the whole thing. Money is just money.