My two came to me that way. Roy was eleven and Thea was already seventeen and still around even though she doesn't have to be. Uh one of the major things besides what I told him is that, most likely, even more if they're coming in from foster care (Roy wound up moving in after his parents died) , whatever kid you end up with is going to be very hurt in a lot of ways. Not broken or anything but...not something you're gonna be able to just jump in and fix.
There are tools and things that you can use to help kids who are hurt, and one of them? Is probably gonna be giving them something to focus on. With Roy, it was channeling how pissed he was at the world into archery. It was sort of...a place to put everything that he was feeling and a way to zero in on it. With Thea, the focus has been getting her life back to some semblance of normal, so getting her involved in getting the GED and having a job to do.
And there's a guy on the network, Wrex, who's probably really really good at this kind of thing. He runs a ranch where a lot of kids who've been through hell go for a while. Thea was. He's really good at figuring out what's going on in their heads and how to help.