Foster Care in a Small House

[Patooties]

We have a fairly small house. It is three bedrooms, but they are small bedrooms. We are just starting to look into foster care and considering licensing agencies, but I have some concerns due to our home. We currently have an 8 month old and are considering fostering either medically fragile babies, developmentally disabled children, or teen moms and their babies. I know you can have as many foster kids as you have room for (with same sex children sharing rooms only) but I'm wondering if anyone has done this in a relatively small house and while continuing to have your own children. We want our children close together as well, and would like to be pregnant with number two within the next 6 months, but I have no clue how to balance bedroom situations (we do not co-sleep, I tried, but I don't get ANY sleep with a baby in my bedroom). Sorry that is very jumbled and a lot of maybe unrelated questions, I just really want to foster, but I'm SO unsure of all the logistics!
-Bethany

[newmommy13]

We have a 2 bedroom home...small bedrooms at that. We have one dd and currently have one dfs sharing her room. Not ideal but hes a baby and they had a hard time placing him for whatever reason. We can also have one more baby in our room under 12 months. We originally said only one kiddo at a time but they had such a hard time placing dfs that we said yes to him when we were about to get a newborn placement. So for 3 weeks we had little newbie dfd in our room and dfs in dds room. It wasnt bad because we have a decent sized home and most of the square footage is common areas dining room kitchen living room and sun room/play room and we really only sleep in the bedrooms.

Regulations vary so much but here you need 40 sq ft of bedroom space per child. So unless your rooms are very, very tiny you should be able to fit af few more kiddos in comfortably.

[sillyutalktome]

Rules vary by state and I think even area sometimes. We have a small home but it's three small bedrooms. Our agency does not allow foster children and bio children to share a room. Our dd has the smallest bedroom and our foster room is just barely large enough to be licensed for two kids. Like the previous poster most of our square footage is in the living space. Once ds is here he'll sleep in our room at first and then share with dd later (though we are buying our own house soon it will probably be around the same size as this one and just three bedrooms). We can get a waiver and have a foster child under 2 in our bedroom but our agency prefers placements that would avoid that situation.