How Long Does It Take to Become a Foster Parent in Delaware?

The official answer from DFS is four to seven months. The honest answer depends on three things: how quickly you complete your paperwork, whether anyone in your household has lived outside Delaware recently, and whether the next PRIDE training cohort starts next week or next month.

The Realistic Timeline, Step by Step

Month 1: Information Session and Registration (1-4 weeks). DFS holds mandatory three-hour sessions monthly in each county. If you've just missed this month's session in your county, you're waiting three to four weeks before you can even start. After attending, you register on the Foster Parent Portal through the FOCUS system and get assigned a Foster Home Coordinator (FHC). This step takes a single evening plus a few days for processing.

Months 1-3: PRIDE Training (6-10 weeks). The 27-to-30-hour training runs across nine sessions. Most cohorts take six to eight weeks, depending on whether sessions are weekly (faster) or biweekly (slower). The variable here is availability — if the next cohort in your county is full or hasn't been scheduled yet, you'll either wait for the next cycle or commute to a different county. Sussex County residents face the longest potential wait, as training is less frequently offered in Georgetown compared to Wilmington or Dover. Some applicants lose a full month waiting for a new cohort to start. Pro tip: ask your FHC about training schedules before you attend the information session so you can time your entry to minimize this gap.

Month 3: Application Submission (1-3 weeks). After completing PRIDE, you submit your formal application package: financial statements, medical evaluations from a licensed physician, autobiographical statement, proof of insurance (homeowners/renters and auto), and three non-relative personal references. If you've been gathering documents during training (which you absolutely should), this step takes about a week. If you're starting from scratch — scheduling doctor appointments, hunting for insurance documents, tracking down references — add two to three weeks.

Months 3-5: Background Checks and Home Study (concurrent, 6-12 weeks). These run at the same time, which is the good news. Background checks take 15 to 60 days through the IdentoGO fingerprinting system and registry searches. The home study involves at least three visits from a contracted assessment worker and aims for completion within 90 days of training. Delaware's compact geography helps here — assessment workers don't lose entire days driving between appointments like they do in states with hundreds of rural miles between families.

The biggest timeline variable is background check processing. If every household member has lived in Delaware for the past five years, the SBI and FBI checks typically clear in two to four weeks. If anyone lived out of state, DFS must request registry checks from each prior state of residence — and some states are notoriously slow, turning a four-week process into a ten-week one.

Month 5-6: Licensing Committee Review (2-4 weeks). Your completed assessment goes before DFS leadership for final approval. This is generally the shortest step, but it depends on the committee's meeting schedule. Your license will specify the number, age range, and gender of children you're approved for, as well as whether you're approved for traditional, specialized, or therapeutic placements.

What Pushes You Past Seven Months

Out-of-state background checks are the number-one culprit. This is especially problematic for New Castle County applicants who work in Pennsylvania or New Jersey, or anyone who moved to Delaware within the past five years. The issue isn't that your out-of-state history is a problem — it's that Delaware cannot control how fast another state processes its registry check response. Plan for this if it applies to you.

Incomplete medical forms. Your physician needs to complete the specific DFS health form, checking every required box for every household member. This is not a standard employment physical — it's a detailed assessment of physical and mental health fitness for foster parenting. If the form comes back incomplete, you resubmit and wait for another appointment. Get the form to your doctor early, explain its importance, and review it before they submit.

Home safety corrections. Minor issues like water temperature above 120 degrees or an expired fire extinguisher are fixable in a day. But if the assessor identifies a structural issue — inadequate bedroom square footage, a pool without code-compliant fencing, lead paint or radon concerns — the correction and re-inspection add weeks to the timeline.

PRIDE scheduling gaps. If you attend an information session in a month where no PRIDE cohort is starting soon in your county, you could wait four to six weeks just to begin training. This is dead time where nothing else can move forward.

Reference non-response. DFS needs to complete interviews with your three non-relative references. If your references don't return calls from unknown numbers, the home study stalls. Brief them in advance and confirm their contact details are current.

How to Hit the Four-Month Mark

The fastest path through Delaware's licensing process: attend the information session the same month a PRIDE cohort is starting. Gather your financial documents, schedule your medical exam, and line up your references during training rather than after. Get fingerprinted as soon as your FHC authorizes it — don't wait until training is complete. Have your home safety items (water temperature, smoke detectors, locked medication storage, fire extinguisher) addressed before the home study begins so the assessor finds a compliant home on the first visit.

Delaware's small size is genuinely an advantage here. You're never more than two hours from any DFS office, training center, or IdentoGO fingerprinting location. If you treat the process like a project with clear milestones and parallel workstreams, four months is achievable for households with no out-of-state complications.

Our Delaware Foster Care Licensing Guide includes a week-by-week timeline planner that maps every milestone from information session to license approval, with parallel track scheduling for background checks and document gathering, so you can track your progress and catch delays before they compound.

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