Family Child Care Provider & Foster Parent

[kpa0627]

HI,
I have an in home daycare and am interested in becoming a foster parent also. Is there anyone on here that does both? I've been wanting to be a foster parent for a long time! I only want to take in one child at a time. My only concern is if the foster child is between the infant to 5 year old range they would be here @ my in home daycare during the day (which would be taking up one of my daycare spots). Would this just be a loss of income on my part or would they be considered a state paid child and I would get state pay on them for daycare... even though i'm the caregiver for that foster child and the daycare provider? I know being a foster parent you get paid a per day fee to cover food costs, clothing, etc. I'm not trying to do this for the money but I don't want to lose out on income because they would be using up a daycare slot if this makes sense.

[TGT09]

DH and I should be licensed FP's here in the next 2 weeks or so (hopefully) so I can answer many of your questions but a lot of them are going to be state and even county specific to your area....just like daycare laws.

Any child here in Ohio is counted towards our "spots". In the state of Ohio we receive a per diem ($20 a day) for each child. If we wanted the state to pay for childcare then we would only get $15 per diem.....to me, it's not worth it to get another job because foster children have a TON of appointments. Keep this in mind when considering to be a FP....while I can only imagine how rewarding it will be, there is a lot of running around to do with them. Luckily, our county can do some of the transporting but most counties around us do not.

My first piece of advice is to contact your local jobs and family services to find out what the laws are. I do know that some of our surrounding counties you are not allowed to run a home daycare and be an FP also.

Hope this helps! Feel free to PM if you want.