It may seem it has been a long time since you contacted the state and decided to have an Adoption Only home study completed. While there were some valid reasons to consider the foster to adopt program your family has chosen to only have children legally free, or very close to it, placed as pre-adoptive rather then risk fostering and waiting to see if a child will become available for adoption.
Training is finished, the background check is done and your friends and family have provided the references. You have seen the doctor and had a full physical and may have even seen a psychologist to be sure you have not lost your mind completely. The state has inspected your home and you changed all the locks and moved the medication to a safe cabinet. Your adoption worker knows so much about you that if asked another personal questions you would likely answer without hesitation. You may or may not depending on your state been given a copy of the 36 page home study which was sent to the main office for the state children’s services and taken the full six weeks to be approved. And now the real hard part and long wait has started.
Your family is ready to review the profiles of the children who need forever families. In many states there are two sets of profiles to look at: Children with case plans for adoption and children who are legally free to be adopted. Most states would like to find a family for a child before they are legally free in order to avoid making a child a ward of the state or an orphan. A baby or child’s case worker is now actively recruiting families to be the adoptive placement.
Your adoption worker will help you navigate the profiles of children with pending terminations of parental rights. These children will not likely be listed on internet waiting children listings but instead only shown to the families with approved state home studies. The goal of the state is to find a family as soon as possible before the child is legally free and shown to the families in other states. As time passes your worker will fax or email you the new listings for review and you will express your interest by having the child’s worker review your home study. At the same time you look at the state waiting children photo listings on the internet and may even look at a few in other states across the nation.
It seems that all these babies, children and sibling groups have so few issues you cannot imagine any reasons why they would not be adopted by a loving family tomorrow. While you are at this point in the process your goal is to have your home study submitted for as many possible placements that even seem remotely a good match. Your worker will send the child’s worker a copy of your home study and you wait and wait for an answer. Many approved adoptive families find this the most frustrating point in the journey because often you wait and never hear a word about being considered the adoptive family resource. Not knowing why is beyond frustrating and this is the time you wonder what is wrong with your family?
Well, the answer is simpler then you might have considered at the beginning. While the profiles you read seem to outline a child’s history and possibly even many of the special needs or issues you might need to consider the fact is that a foster child has the right to confidentiality. The majority of information about any child listed for placement may seem complete on your first review. The truth is that you will not know the whole story unless the case worker reviews your home study and sees that you have not excluded issues the child has which have been kept confidential.
In most cases if you have asked to be considered as a match for a child and the case worker reviews your home study to find you explicitly stated you would rather not parent a child with a specific issue, your home study will simply be removed from the pile of those being considered. You will never know why and may not even know your home study was disqualified because the child’s information is confidential. As difficult as this is I think most of us might agree it is in the best interest of the baby or child to manage things this way. I would not want the real issues my children have posted on the internet or reviewed by every interested family either.
It does not make our waiting easy and some of us feel pain when we see a baby or child we expressed an interest in adopting listed for months after we had our home study submitted. Eventually, however the calls start to come from our adoption worker with a little more information and the opportunity to withdraw our home study from those being considered.
It can be a painful moment in time when you are given a bit more information and realize the baby or child has more special needs or a history that you know you are simply not able to accept or capable of parenting. Potential adoptive families may actually find they pass on the chance for a match once a few more details are given and this can be another emotional roller coaster ride you never expected to be riding.
In the future I will write more entries about reading children’s profiles between the lines. For now I will leave this topic with one word of advice, trust the case workers to do their bests to find the right family for the child and try not to take it personally if you never hear back about a baby or child you have expressed interest in adopting. You will eventually be matched it may just take some time for the right match to be found.
Special Needs and Adoption-Related Terms:
A | B | C | D | E-F | G-H-I | J-K-L | M | N-O | P | Q-R | S | T-U-V-W-X-Y-Z
For more information about parenting special needs children you might want to visit the Families.com Special Needs Blog and the Mental Health Blog. Or visit my personal website.