Neighbor with paranoid schizophrenia

[Erick Estrada]

Originally Posted by afc wimbledon

I make around 200,000 for caring for three kids.

Wow that's much more than I thought a person would make fostering kids.

[afc wimbledon]

I'm very much at the upper end (although not top end, but I can't/won't take sex offenders, that's where the big money is)

[Chill Cosby]

Originally Posted by afc wimbledon

If I can ask how come you know so much?

PM'd!

[afc wimbledon]

Originally Posted by fotze

I don't know why that's funny to me, but it is.

I was offered around 10,000 for one kid a few years ago, but I knew the kid from working in jail, not enough tea in china for me to risk other kids in the neighbourhood! Also would have had to get rid of my dog (and seriously you don't want to know why)

[jayswin]

Originally Posted by afc wimbledon

I was offered around 10,000 for one kid a few years ago, but I knew the kid from working in jail, not enough tea in china for me to risk other kids in the neighbourhood! Also would have had to get rid of my dog (and seriously you don't want to know why)

Oh, Mrcboicgy knows that guy.

[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.

[Ducay]

Strong debate about the treatment and stigmatization of mentally disabled people turns into a feel good thread about being foster parents. CP, don't ever change.

[Shawnski]

Originally Posted by Ducay

Strong debate about the treatment and stigmatization of mentally disabled people turns into a feel good thread about being foster parents. CP, don't ever change.

More like:

Question from OP about a concerning situation got railroaded into the stigmatization of mentally disabled people. CP, don't ever change.

I was pretty disgusted with the response to MacDaddys posts. Instead of the CP community trying to understand the situation better by asking questions, he was attacked. People here that have experience in the matter jumped on him instead of using their experience to help flush out the matter better in order to help him be able to convey his concerns to the proper authorities.

Something has clearly changed for the worse with the individual in question. And that is a warning sign you simply cannot ignore. The OP needed help to be able to communicate the issue to the correct people with the necessary information that will result in the concern being addressed thoroughly.

Instead of using your experience to help the OP in this matter, you and others took a right out of left field tangent about stigmatization.

This is a very serious matter. Something "broke". Identifying what has changed and why is critical for the situation to be corrected, and I hope the CPS/AHS understand the seriousness and will address it.

Good luck MacDaddy

[Wood]

Agree with everything shawnski said

A lot of society is absolutely uniformed when it comes to mentally disabled people, bit this thread wasn't the place to bring it up, and macdaddy isnt someone who should have been attacked the way he was for being genuinely concerned for the man, his family and his neighborhood

[Chill Cosby]

"Hey look! The bickering in that thread died down and it looks like it's going to end on a positive note... better get in there quick and fix that!"

[Sliver]

Originally Posted by Chill Cosby

"Hey look! The bickering in that thread died down and it looks like it's going to end on a positive note... better get in there quick and fix that!"

lol, totally. Did he only read the first page or something?