Real talk about life as a foster parent with Jason & Amanda Palmer.

We are Jason and Amanda Palmer. We have been together for 20 years. Our experience has involved raising biological kids, step kids, extended family, adopting 4 kids, and fostering about 20 kids over our 2 decades together. After our second son was born we were not able to have any more kids biologically. Amanda was always a mother at heart. As a young girl, at 5 years old she was tasked with taking care of her newborn brother due to her mother’s struggle with addiction. Years of taking care of kids and experiencing the pain of not having a mother present in her life for most of the time; she wanted to help kids who didn’t have the love and support she craved for so many years. I (Jason) was raised in a quasi-cult and was disgusted by the “Holier Than Thou” mentality I saw when I left the church coupled with a complete disregard for the church’s charge to care for orphans. After a few years, we began researching adoption, specifically international adoption (this was during China’s “One Child Policy”). After a bit of research it was apparent it was cost-prohibitive for us at that time. Our Adoption Journey Begins A chance encounter with the licensing worker at our local Children’s Division left us feeling pulled toward Foster Care. Everything fell into place so quickly that we were licensed and taking in children quicker than we would have imagined. Our first placement was a brother and sister who had a deceased father and an incarcerated mother. She did not work her case plan and ended up losing her Parental Rights to the State. We were advised by the Judge that it was time to file a petition for adoption if we were interested. There were biological family members who were aware of the situation and they would have “first preference” due to being family (if they wanted to file). No one else filed a competing petition and our petition for adoption was granted. We continued to foster kids and considered adopting another child, but the right opportunity never presented itself. More kids... Then we found out that a distant step-relative of Amanda was in foster care and we had taken care of him off and on for the first year of his life already. It was a no-brainer. Of course, we wanted him to be in a place where he would be comfortable with people he already knew. Then we were contacted by the Children’s Division about an addicted infant that needed a place, and we agreed to take him in too. Neither of these two boy’s families chose to follow their case plan and eventually signed off their parental rights and they were legally available for adoption. We had already been the place where they had been for most of their lives so we decided to file 2 petitions for adoption and that rounded us out at 7 kids. What We Are Doing Now. Along the road, we decided to create a podcast about foster care and adoption. It has been a weekly podcast called Foster Care: An Unparalleled Journey that we have hosted for a little over a year now. We have had the honor to talk to current and former foster parents and kids as well as adoptive parents and adoptees as well. We have even gotten to talk to professionals who help kids from hard places in order to create a supportive environment for everyone involved. We continue to keep our home open for kids in foster care but I am pretty sure we are done adopting… for now.Links: https://fostercarenation.com [email protected] https://linktr.ee/fostercarenation https://www.facebook.com/groups/fostercareuj https://www.instagram.com/fostercarenation/ https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/foster-care-an-unparalleled-journey/id1489772654 https://open.spotify.com/show/4zGv5CG8W7g7K6m5sycNKM https://patreon.com/fostercarenation