I hope I didn't come off as judgmental, my intent was only to suggest keeping life as simple as possible.

In raising our biological, adopted, and foster children, we can have faced all sort of rude commentary about our choices made, even though those family and neighbors had no clue as to the decision process or the information we had but don't think its smart to share publicly for our children privacy. And that has left us defenseless against the ill-informed rumormongering scum that once were great neighbors growing up.....But you have to do what works for you and all of your children individually, no matter what others think.

Fostering can entail a lot of requirements that are just a pain in the ass, on top of the limited number of providers that accept the funding. I remember being told two weeks into a placement that court had ordered the children have complete physicals and dental exams within thirty days of placement by a county doctor, despite just having them done prior to placement. That meant we had 8 possible work days, because of four day weeks for the doctors and holidays, to find a county agency doctor with open schedules to do four complete physicals and dental exams for four children.

While it sounds like you don't have to much to worry about, we found the programs that accepted the foster care based funding also were more likely understand the needs of the children in the Fostercare system. The lily white elementary public school, that I attended as a child, had no clue how to provide the services that several of our children needed. Several family member are still mad that our oldest child (adopted) now sees a county counselor and psychiatrist for Bi-polar and RAD, while our younger (adopted) children drive two hours to a specialist psychiatrist who we feel is much better qualified. But we also have to think about what will be better int he long run and realize that when our he decides to finally run away for good that at least he will have access to counseling and a psychiatrist in the local area and will already be in the system.