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How to start the process of adoption? What should I do? Someone help please
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Hi Reddit. Coming on here for advice and input. My husband and I have been discussing wanting to adopt within the next year and a half once we’re settled somewhere more permanent. I’m basically just really curious of how the process works since we have fertility issues and it doesn’t look like pregnancy will be an option for us.
How do we find the mother? when we do find a mother how do we go about the adoption process etc. Who would we need to get involved?
How do we adopt a 1-2 year old the best way?
How can we avoid spending a lot of money to adopt? Or is it all through the roof to adopt regardless what you do?
What are things I need to know and do before I can/should adopt?
Is it a good idea to foster to adopt?
If anyone can answer these questions and give more advice it would be great.
Edit: we’re located in Texas but will soon be in Oklahoma
Top Comment: Hi OP, welcome! This is a long journey and a complex topic. There's lots of good advice on past posts. Here's a high level overview. Will vary by your location and circumstances. Domestic infant adoption: First step is finding an agency that works in your area. You will do a home study and put together a profile of yourself. The agency will show your profile to mothers/parents looking to place their baby for adoption. If one chooses you, the agency will connect you. There's no guarantee you will be chosen. The mother can change her mind even after birth for a short window of time. In almost all cases, you will be expected to keep in touch with the mother and provide her updates about the baby and occasional meetings (open adoption.) Cost: $20k-$80k or more, and timeline typically 1 year plus (often several years or you may never match - there are many more families seeking infants than there are infants being placed.) Alternative domestic infant adoption option: You advertise directly for expectant parents looking to place their baby. If you find someone, you work with just a lawyer to complete. Adoption advertising is illegal in some states, and there are other rules. I don't know anything about this option beyond that. International adoption: First step is finding an agency that works with the country you want to adopt from. Consider what countries you have a close cultural connection to and/or have a strong cultural presence in your area. You will do a home study and submit a dossier. Typically the country matches you with a child that roughly fits your parameters and all you get to say is yes or no. Or sometimes you may match with a child that you pick out from a photolisting who is older and/or has complex medical needs. Cost: $40k-$80k. Children are typically older (school age and up.) Not babies. Any toddlers available would have very complex needs. Timeline 1-4 years approximately depending on country. Reece's Rainbow is an organization that offers guidance and funding for some special needs international adoptions and has a good guide on their page (they are not an agency.) Foster to adopt: First step is finding your local department of child and family services agency and learning their process for licensing a foster home. You must be committed to supporting most or all children reunifying with their family. Occasionally, if that's not possible, a child *may* be eligible to be adopted and you *may* be chosen, but there is no guarantee. Age of child can be any age from infant to teenager. Infants are most likely to reunite with parents or other family. Cost: free-ish. Timeline: 1 year to be licensed; potentially many years before it happens to work out to adopt a child (or may never happen.) Waiting child: Similar to foster-to-adopt but you match with a child who is already eligible for adoption. Children are typically pre-teen and older, and/or part of a large sibling group. See "adoptuskids.org" for more information. Cost: free-ish. Timeline: as little as 1 year if you're quick on your paperwork. General points: - The home study will be specific to your living situation so it couldn't be started until after you move. - Learn all you can about parenting a child with trauma and how to support a child's connection to their birth family and culture, regardless of the type you pursue. Even domestic infant adoption will have these elements. Parenting a child from a traumatic background requires different parenting techniques than you may have planned to use. - Make sure you've fully worked through your feelings about infertility before adopting. Possibly with a professional. This will be discussed on your home study. Parenting a child through adoption is a different experience in many ways than parenting a biological child; in some ways it's better to think of it as just different things rather than one being a replacement for another. Make sure you'd be able to be great parents to the adopted child even if, for example, they look and/or act nothing like you, they want to reunite with their biological family, your family doesn't accept them fully as grandchildren, you unexpectedly get pregnant after adopting and end up with a biological child after all, etc. ETA: When looking for an agency, do your homework about how to identify an ethical agency. "The Archibald Project" has some advice here. Adoption is a for-profit business and can be extremely damaging.
Adopted moms of reddit, would you adopt children? Why or why not?
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Note: Looking for perspective from those who were adopted themselves.
My husband and I have a biological child and absolutely love being parents. We are interested in potentially adopting in the future. Giving this context to this post as it's not a matter of being able to bear a biological child or not, but more of an interest in bringing someone into our family and giving them the love and care every child deserves to have.
I had a long conversation recently with a close friend who is adopted, who said she wouldn't adopt herself, because she had a tough adoption story. I was surprised to hear this, and became curious to hear other adopted people's experiences.
Thanks in advance for everyone's thoughtfulness and openness on what can be a difficult subject.
Top Comment: I totally would. I was officially adopted when I was 10 to an equally abusive household (yay to the system!) and my husband and I would like to adopt older children when our kids are a bit older. I think it’s important that older kids in the system should get a chance to find loving homes, also.
Would you adopt?
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Ever since i found out that I've been adopted, I'm thinking about adopting in the future myself. giving a warm home and a loving family for someone who's been left alone, would be my way of giving back. What are your thoughts on this subject? Do you consider adopting children in the future?
Top Comment: Not a chance in hell would I adopt. I came from foster care. I know how much trauma I had, and how much therapy it took for me to just trust let alone continue to exist.
why don't more people adopt?
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from what i've seen of natalist arguments for having children such as wanting to continue their legacy, wanting to have a family and sharing the things they enjoy about this world surely adoption would make more sense?
they'd be able to consider it a "selfless" act since they'd be giving someone already born into this world a better life and still bring themselves the benefits of having a child while not adding to overpopulation or risk bringing someone into this world destined to suffer due to being born with disabilities that they would not be able to care for.
there's nothing morally wrong or sad about it so why isn't it more popular?
Top Comment: Adoption is super hard. You need to check a ton of boxes before you can adopt. But you can be a fucking crackhead abuser and be a foster parent to 10 kids. The system is completely fucked. The entire process needs to be completely redone.
How does the adoption process work?
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Hi there, so my question for this subreddit is, how did you choose what child to adopt? How does it work? I’m not ready yet in my life to adopt, but I know that day will come. I worry a lot about the process of it all when I think about it. I mean how does choosing a child work? I imagine it’s base off what you are like as a parent and person, lifestyle etc. but what are the actual age ranges? You hear about kids being adopted at ages of 3 years old. But what about the kids that are 10 that have no parents?
I know I’m asking a lot. I just don’t know where to start on all this
Top Comment: Hi. Adoptive parent here. So, when you decide to adopt you will contact an adoption agency, either a private one, or one attached to your local authority (we did local authority). A social worker will make contact with you and come to visit. They'll have an initial conversation with you about your reasons of wanting to adopt, what you're looking for etc. If the Agency decides to proceed you will then go through stage 1. There are some personal assessments here, as well as adoption training. Training involves both class room and self study learning where you will learn all about adoptive children, trauma and techniques to deal with it. If you pass stage 1 you'll move onto stage 2. Stage two involves detailed assessments of yourself (and partner if you have one). They delve into every aspect of your life from birth to present day. This is to formulate a report for approval panel. You will also need to pass a home assessment, a finance assessment and a medical assessment. Assuming you pass and they write their report you'll be invited to approval panel. This is where you are interviewed by a panel of people (social workers, adoptive parents, people who have been adopted etc) and they decide whether to grant you approval to become an adoptive parent. It is only when you are approved that you will then start the matching process. Matching with children can be a long process. It sounds weird but there is literally a website with all the children on. Think of it like a dating website if you will. Profiles of children written by their social workers, all trying to "sell" the children to you. You will read countless profiles. Things will stick out to you where you think "Yes, I like that sound of that" or "no, not for me" When you finally whittle your choices down and choose a child you will send your profile (via your social worker) to the child's social worker. Again, think of it like a dating website. You've swiped yes, now their social worker has to read your profile and swipe yes too. Assuming they do, a plan will be drawn up for introductions to the child/ren. You will have "bump into" meetings with the child/ren and their Foster carers. The children are not told who you are at this stage, you're often introduced as a friend of the Foster carers. This way if the meetings go terrible or you decide the child/ren isn't for you, you can pull out and the child/ren are none the wiser. If all goes well after several meets and everyone decides to go ahead you will then go to a formal matching panel. It's the same as approval panel, but this time you're seeking acceptance that the match is appropriate. Once approved the child/ren is told you're their new adoptive parents. You have more meetings, and a plan is drawn up for "handover" of the children from Foster carers to yourself. This involves more and more meetups until the child is ready to move. Then they move in with you. That's the process. In terms of children. There are all sorts of children in the system. Boys, girls, black, white, solo, sibling groups, disability and none. You outlay your preferences with social workers at matching stage. We said we had no preference on sex, race, age, ethnicity. The only thing we excluded was life limiting disability. We ended up with a 5 year old boy. In terms of age ranges, it is important to note the majority of adoptive couples want young children. Babies are near impossible to adopt unless you go the Foster to adopt route. Most children are adopted ages 2+ Though, once a child reaches the ages of 7ish social services take them off the adoptive lists and place them in permanent care. The older a child gets the more aware they become of the process. Apparently there is a lot of evidence that this can cause trauma when they realise they're not being adopted, so social services take that option away to save the child the trauma and give them stability. So you won't find a 10 year old waiting to be adopted. There are lots of other bits and pieces I havent gone into. Early linking, the foster to adopt route. But I am trying to just give you a simple overview. I hope this gave you some answers.
Is it difficult to adopt American kids?
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Was watching a TV show that featured an American family that had adopted children from Africa and Asia, and was in the process of adopting a child from Europe. I assume there are plenty of children in America who need families, so why is this family looking so far away? Are there barriers in terms of government or policy that would make it difficult to adopt local children?
Top Comment: Domestic adoptions (American kids adopted by American families) are generally of 3 types. Adoption from foster care, what is called a private adoption, or direct placement. Direct placement is when a (usually) family member raises the child instead of the biological parent - could be a grandparent, Aunt/Uncle, etc. The child may or may not be formally adopted - it could be just a legal guardianship. There are a large number of kids being raised by family members in the US. Parental rights are not always terminated. Second is private placements where the birth parent makes a plan to place a child for adoption usually right at birth. Usually there is an agency or lawyers involved that oversees the process. It is very expensive with prospective parents paying lawyers, agencies, and medical and legal expenses for the birth mother. Families looking to adopt can get placed on years long wait lists before their dossier is even presented as a possibility to birth parents and there is no guarantee that a birth mother picks them. The birth parents also have time to change their minds (could be months) after the baby is placed with the adoptive family. Both the timing and eventual cost are uncertain but there are many more families looking for babies than available infants. The birth parents may specifically request an open adoption where they still have regular contact with the child. Third is adoption from foster care. With foster care adoptions, in many cases the children are not infants. If they are infants, the birthparents were deemed not fit to raise the baby (maybe they are on drugs or in jail). The usual goal of foster care is to give the birthparents time to get their act together and reunite the child with them. (Obviously that isn't always the case but lots of times it is). The birth families, both mother and father and potentially even grandparents have to give up their parental rights prior to the child being able to be adopted by a new family. The cost for families to adopt from foster care is low but the uncertainty is very high. Adoptable children tend to be older and may have had trauma in their lives. There are many successful adoptions from foster care but there are also many children in the foster care system who are not available to adopt because their biological parents haven't and won't give up their parental rights. As the children get older it can be harder and harder to find families for them - for example, if they end up in foster care at 16 instead of as a toddler. So as for why people chose to adopt from other countries...domestic adoptions have a ton of uncertainty in cost, time, and even the uncertainty of if the child can be taken back after placement. International adoptions generally are more defined as to all 3 of those variables. There are usually a ton more families looking for healthy babies than available healthy babies. But domestic adoptions happen regularly in the US both through foster care and private placements.
Would like to hear experiences in adopting!
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Hi everyone, my wife and I are thinking of adopting but we would strongly prefer a child who is no more than 3 years old.
I would like to hear your experiences in adopting a >3 year old child. Was it a private adoption? Open? Closed? What were the costs of the private adoption? What was the process like?
Starting my journey and step one is today!
Top Comment: Private adoption domestically you are almost exclusively looking at newborns and open adoptions. The wait time can be very long and cost can be very large. No one can tell you the wait time bc a lot of it is chance. You need a birth mom to choose you and ultimately end up placing. Strongly recommend researching reputable agencies and interviewing them. In my experience the process from starting to actually getting listed felt super long (probably close to a year, granted this was in Covid times and we were Canadians adopting from the us). For older children in my experience they are typically from the foster care system and you have to be prepared for mental/physical disabilities and traumatic backgrounds.
Have you ever considered adopting a child?
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I'm not sure if this is the right place to ask but what is your view on adoption and have any of you ever considered or adopted a child? I know its a long process but im curious to hear what people their experiences are with that.
Top Comment: I would have liked to, but I know I couldn't handle it. My colleague applied to adopt and they told him you have a 99% chance of a child with either mental health issues or physical or intellectual disabilities. I haven't heard any positive adoption stories unfortunately. The kids seem to be too affected by trauma in the past to be well adjusted, which is horrible. I just know I wouldn't be the right person to help these kids, but hugely admire those who do.