Foster Care Adoptions: How Not to Give Up (Part II)

Thanks for all the comments on the last post! It's time for some corrections and additions before I move on.

When it comes to religion, at least one parent and one social worker have left informative comments and mentioned that in their experience, they don't see being a non-Christian as a major handicap in their area. That's great. I don't think I need to take back or delete anything I said earlier, but I do need to add quite a bit more qualification.

I live in Georgia, which is one of the Bibliest parts of the Bible Belt. I also live in Atlanta, which is fairly diverse and open-minded, though the city is so informally segregated that it's hard to see that. We elected the first Buddhist representative to Congress, after all. Much of the rest of Georgia complains about Atlanta being full of "gays, blacks, and liberals". So this is an environment where non-Christians are not exactly ostracized, and Christianity is incredibly diverse, but it's still intensely Christian. On Sunday morning, you'll often find the gay black liberals dressed up and on their way to the gay black liberal church.

If you're a non-Christian prospective parent who lives in, say, San Francisco or Manhattan, and you're signed with a county agency and are not doing any interstate, then you should probably just ignore all my dire warnings in that section. But if you are doing interstate, you might want to plan for the worst-case scenario... a child's social worker in rural Oklahoma might have a totally different perspective on what makes the right kind of family than your local worker does.

SocialWrkr24/7 also left some great information on family ranking. Ranking is definitely subjective and will vary enormously according to your region and the kind of child you are submitting your homestudy for. Single dads and single moms may be preferred for children with specific kinds of histories and issues.

Matching

Once you're licensed and homestudied, the agonizing wait begins. More than anything else, you'll want to know, HOW LONG? But no one can tell you. According to Page 32 of the Adoptuskids.org report, this is the stage at which the majority of families who drop out will drop out.

Each agency does things different ways. When you're working with state and national photolistings, you'll follow this general procedure:

1) register (usually a quick process)
2) search the photolistings
3) submit inquiries on children. You might do this through the site, or perhaps the site will give the child's worker's phone number and.or email address.
4) submit your homestudy. Usually, you cannot do this yourself. Your worker needs to do it for you.

This is an emotionally draining process. It can start to feel like bargaining at a swap meet. You quickly realize that the younger, healthier children will have had a ton of studies submitted on them, and you have a minuscule chance of being accepted. Then you feel guilty not submitting it for an older child with more special needs who might not have any inquiries at all. You begin to feel an uncommon mixture of emotion: humiliation mixed with guilt and inadequacy.

The process isn't helped by the fact that many of the photolistings are poorly run. At one point, it took me about three months of calling before I got in touch with someone about a particular listing. Then they told me the boy had been adopted six months ago. Apparently, this is very common.

At this point, your time networking and being in touch with other adoptive parents is hopefully starting to pay off. You'll probably need to just give up searching on certain states and certain locations. You'll begin to realize that some of the photolistings are really phantoms and no one will ever actually adopt interstate out of that location, anyway.

If you're working with a county agency, your search will most likely concentrate on local placements. Many children won't be photolisted at all. You're relying predominantly on your worker to network for you.

Another path is meeting children at adoption events. We never went to any of these. However, if you're looking at older children (roughly 10-18) you need to think really long and hard about going to them, even though nobody ever wants to go to these events. Social workers hate them, I'm sure the children hate them, parents hate them. You'll imagine your nightmare scenario... a child walks up to you and asks "will you be my mommy?" Then you break down and start sobbing uncontrollably.

There is only one ethical, positive thing about these events: these older children deserve some say when it comes to their future family. This is a chance for them to gather information for themselves, to choose, and to have some small degree of control over the future of their childhood. You can't expect a 13-year-old to pick their own family based only on a pile of homestudies, so meeting their potential future family at some point in the process, in some way, before final decision... this is absolutely crucial.

I also think that many of these events are highly structured, in recognition of the chaotic emotions involved, so it's not like the workers just throw the two groups into the same room and yell "PICK ONE".

How long is too long?

The only way to answer that question is to ask other people who've gone through the same agency. Is your wait time still in the average, or starting to stretch to the extremes?

It took us eight months to get full homestudy approval. Then it took another eight months to go to committee, and we were matched the first time we went to committee. Towards the end I was seriously considering starting over again somewhere else.

A very rough guide might be that if you never even get to committee in a year, you should re-evaluate. Once you get to committee, at least you know that people are considering you seriously and the process is working somehow. Going to committee doesn't mean you have to accept the placement. It does mean you will have the opportunity to get a lot more information on the child(ren), so you can make a truly informed decision as to whether you should withdraw your application, or stay.

Here are some reasons you might not be getting to committee:

1) Your worker is doing a bad job because they are a bad worker. They are not submitting your homestudy or not getting in touch with any other workers. The solutions are to switch workers at the same place, or leave. You might also try to do much of the worker's job for them in terms of contact, but this is an exhausting and dangerous project.
2) Your worker is doing a bad job because they think your family isn't that suitable. Maybe you have alienated them for some reason. This could be your fault, or their fault. Ideally, social workers would tell you to give up and go away outright, but sometimes they might not want to deal with the confrontation. If you can't repair your relationship with the worker, you'll have to switch or leave.
3) Your expectations are not realistic. You are not applying for a wide enough population of children. This could be out of entitlement, or simply out of naiveté. For example, if I'd restricted my applications to Asian children only, I doubt I'd be matched today.
4) Your homestudy is bad.

If you think it's because your homestudy is bad, and your agency can't or won't fix it, you have some hard choices. If you think it's their fault, you should go start the process again with another agency. If you switch, do it politely and without burning bridges. Social workers from your old agency might be friends with social workers at your new agency.

Also, try to be as objective as possible, without beating yourself up, and consider the possibility that maybe your family is just not suitable. If you make that determination, I still don't think you need to give up. If your passion for the goal is still burning, then take a break for a year. Work on yourself, work on your family. Then start fresh. I know that sounds really insulting. But not everyone is suited for this. You can't be perfect, but you have to be strong.

Facing Change

You may realize that you're changing many of your attitudes and parameters. All kinds of things can change. Some people even start the process married, and then end up reapplying as single parents.

One common thing that happens is that you radically reevaluate your attitude towards contact with birth/first parents. According to the report I've been using, it seems the majority of foster care adoptive parents (about 2/3 of them) do have post-adoption contact. You might not understand why at the beginning. Aren't these the people that have abused and neglected their children? By the end, you will probably have changed your mind and realized that the issue is a lot more complicated. Most trainings have a strong focus on the importance of some kind of contact for the wellbeing of your child. Sometimes, of course, contact is absolutely out of the question, but there's usually at least one or two extended relatives who represent a safe connection.

It's hard to know how much you can and should change when it comes to special needs and number of children. Sometimes, you need to trust your instincts and hold to your original parameters. You are the person who knows yourself best.

What to do during the wait

- Don't put your life on hold
- Join internet support groups and keep doing research
- Go to extra trainings. Sometimes you can satisfy hour requirements by online study and book reports, but it's so much more useful to go physical events and meet other people
- Keep the healthy relationships with your partner, friends and family; don't shrink into yourself and become isolated. It might feel like you've walked through a door into a totally different world, and everyone else has stayed behind on the other side of the door.
- Be aggressive about contact with your worker. Follow up and stay in touch. Don't let them forget you. Ask for rough timelines on anything they promise. If they get irritated with you, try to manage this irritation. You can remind them that you just want to be "proactive" and you will be equally proactive on behalf of your child(ren) when they are placed with you.
- Don't be too aggressive! And don't contact them just because you happen to be feeling especially pissed-off and depressed. Put down the phone, take a deep breath, and ask yourself if you really need to contact them at that very moment. You might mention in general ways that you're feeling a bit stressed, but keep your inner turmoil to yourself. They are very busy and it's not their job to be your therapist. They also need to know that you can manage difficult, stressful situations. If you think the wait is too stressful, then how are you going to handle placement, which might be 10x as stressful?

To be continued

I was reminded that two things I should have brought up in Part I are a) partner issues and b) a history of abuse or trauma.  I'll try and get back to them in Part III.  Any other topics I should cover?  I think I'm going to stop the series pretty soon after the matching process.  Post-adoption support is just such a massive topic...


(link to Part I)

Foster Care Adoptions: How Not to Give Up (Part One First Draft)

I've seen a lot of comments in various debates recounting how some parents were forced to adopt internationally because they were not allowed to adopt from foster care.

I'm skeptical of most of these claims. Not all. Just most. You can see a comment I left here for more details. I've also addressed it several times in older blog posts here. I won't recap those arguments. Instead, I'm going to try and do something constructive: giving a guide to overcoming barriers to adopting from foster care.

I'm really not the best person to do this. I'm sure I'm going to get some things wrong. If anyone wants to comment or email correcting me on details, please go ahead, and I'll update this blog post later and credit you.

This guide is mainly for people who feel overwhelmed by the process, who don't understand it and are terrified of it, and who are worried they'll be discriminated against.  You might be even more scared after you finish reading, but you also might feel better about being forewarned. If you've already adopted from foster care, or have a lot of experience, it won't apply as much.  It also applies much more to adoption than to fostering.

Get educated

Read this report: Barriers & Success Factors in Adoption From Foster Care: Perspectives of Families & Staff. Concentrate very hard on the staff section. Also read this report: "Listening to Parents: Overcoming the Barriers to the Adoption of Children from Foster Care". These two reports will go a long way in giving you a realistic perspective on the process.

Look for Yahoo! Groups and forums and communities for foster care parents, foster care adoptive parents and older child adoptive parents. Get involved and ask questions. Try hard to get as much specific information as possible about your geographical area. Foster care adoption is incredibly local. You might be in a good location, or a hopeless one. Read lots of blogs. Accounts by adults with experiences of being in foster care are especially important to find and read.

Homestudy Yourself

Read this page about homestudies from childwelfare.gov and try to do the process to yourself, in a general way. Are there any general weaknesses or general strengths? Now is the time to address those weaknesses.

If you don't have much documented experience with children, volunteer as a mentor or tutor. Do this with two different age groups, if possible, and also try to find some volunteer work with special needs children. This will help your homestudy and it will help you immeasurably in order to determine what your specific weaknesses and strengths are. You might find that you loathe carrying babies and changing diapers, and adopting an older kid would be just great. You might find that you have a tendency to get overly irritated with certain behaviors or certain needs. Can you change your own mentality? Are you sure this is right for you? Your motivation is important, but it's less important than your strengths and weaknesses.

You really need to think long term here. In fact, a year of preparation before you walk through the agency doors might not be out of order for some families. If you have children, you need to have talks with them about it. This is a very complicated subject and I don't have any experience with it. While I don't think it's necessary to have your other children's full permission when starting, you'll need to realize this is going to be a huge event for them as well as you. This is a good link specifically for fostering.

If you're living somewhere with no room for another child, you're going to need to move. Finances are also an issue. You're going to need to have documented stable income. You don't need to have a lot of money, and you don't need to be debt-free, you just need to be able to show reasonable stability of income and housing. Don't start the process if you're in the middle of a foreclosure or bankruptcy.

Start going to church. I'll go into this later, but you should develop some kind of involvement with some kind of at least vaguely Christian church. If you're an atheist, pagan, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, Jewish, etc., this is going to be especially crucial, and especially complicated. An interfaith volunteer organization might be the best compromise so that you don't have to lie or compromise your beliefs in any way.

Start Going to Orientations & Meetings

Private and public (county) agencies have regular orientation meetings. Start going to them. This is the point at which you need to start creating a positive impression. Don't dress up or dress down too much, pay attention, and be respectful to the presenter, even if they're terrible. Ask a couple good questions. Otherwise don't talk too much.

If there are support groups and foster care parent meetings in your area that also include prospective adoptive parents, start showing up. Stay in the background and ask questions.

The reason I'm saying not to talk too much is that at this point, I've seen that parents start to become very emotional. This is a wrenching process. You're going to start hearing things that touch you in deep ways. A natural response from many people, if they're particularly extroverted, is to open up and share deeply emotional things from their own lives, or show disagreement by getting into arguments that are much louder and passionate than they would otherwise be...

To put it into a nutshell, the process is going to drive you a little crazy. You'll get over it (probably), but you need to keep a hold on your expression, and prevent others from seeing you out of control, because these others may have some input on the adoption process. If you need to talk it out, go get a therapist and talk it out with them. Or do it in an anonymous internet support group.

Networking with other parents is also very important. You want to start doing respite work for other parents as soon as possible. Other parents will be happy to share lots of stories and advice and tips with you.

Start Making Basic Decisions

By now, you should know yourself better. You're ready to start making decisions. Don't decide on your agency yet, but think about age range, number of children, special needs and fostering versus straight/general adoption. Go back and read those reports again in the first section.

- if you're set on adopting a baby, you'll need to foster. Adopting a baby from general adoption is basically impossible, unless they're extremely medically fragile with severe special needs.

- if you foster, you have to be prepared to work primarily for family reunification. If you think this is impossible, if you think it would hurt you too much, and/or hurt your other children too much, you obviously can't foster. But try revisiting the idea from time to time. At a certain point in the process, a mental switch might flick and you will realize that you can still love while letting go. Children are also very resilient in that they're able to comprehend other models of "family" than the norm. By fostering, you aren't necessarily teaching them that children are mobile and replaceable. You might be teaching them that you can love someone who stays with you, and you can love someone who doesn't stay with you.

- one of the most important decisions you can make is how many children. There's a really, really urgent need to keep sibling groups together. But at the same time, parenting more than one child can be incredibly difficult, especially if you don't have a lot of experience or a support network. This is a decision I suggest you spend a lot of time on.

- if you stick with straight/general adoption (adoption without fostering) keep in mind you need to establish a realistic age range. If you tell the workers you are only willing to adopt 1-2 reasonably healthy children from ages 1-4, they might either tell you outright to give up and go away, or else sigh behind their backs at you, and give you passive signals to give up and go away. You'll waste a lot of time.

- knowledge of special needs is crucial. Research them exhaustively. Keep in mind (I'll return to this later) that special needs are both under-reported and over-reported. No matter what the paperwork says, you cannot rely on your child not having substance/alcohol exposure or attachment disorder or mental illness. Also, some foster parents overreport special needs in order to get a higher subsidy level, and some parents overreport special needs out of sheer inexperience. The paperwork gives you clues. It doesn't give you answers. Also, keep in mind the difference between "sexual acting out" and "sexual perpetration"... don't automatically flip at the sight of the word "sexual".

- gender is a tricky one. The trend is that more parents prefer to adopt girls; there are also fewer girls in the system. If you say that you will adopt girls only, the social workers will not be very happy with you. Consider this point very carefully and re-examine your preferences.

Some Categories of Parents

I don't see anything about this in the reports, here are some rough groups of families in the process, and the dangers they face. Think about if you fit in any of these categories, and realize social workers might be slotting you into them.

1) Desperates. They go into fostering with a primary goal of adopting a baby. They frequently burn out when they have to give babies back. Social workers love them when it's emergency baby placement time, but otherwise don't respect them or treat them very well. I think there's a large turnover.
2) Empty-nesters. They're older and they've already raised a batch of grown or nearly-grown children. They're often very relaxed about placements because they don't feel the same urgency to parent, having already done it before. Their main danger is that they might think they know it all based on raising their biological children, and they fall apart when they realize this new kind of parenting is quite different. Social workers will be looking closely at their potential flexibility. However, they generally like this type of family, especially because they're frequently looking to adopt sibling groups.
3) Saints. These are often evangelicals, but they can also be secular ultraliberals. They have no age or special need requirements.  They tell the workers they want to be placed with any number of children that have the greatest need. They often have very unrealistic ideas about these needs, and are unprepared. The social workers will be deeply suspicious of these people. They burn out frequently.
4) Targeted. These parents have often done a lot of research, and want to adopt a specific targeted population. For example, the parents who say, "we want to adopt a child with cerebral palsy because we have another child with cerebral palsy." Or "we are deaf and would like to adopt a deaf child." Social workers love these parents because they can be relied on to adopt frequently hard-to-place kids. However, if the parents end up at the wrong agency, they can be exploited... the social workers will keep them around, and string them along, even though another agency might have plenty of the kind of children they want to adopt.
5) Aggressive. These are people that have a fairly specific idea of what they want, often in a high-demand population, and are insistent that the social workers can get them that placement. The social workers will sometimes give these parents quicker placements simply because they're "in their face" and don't get forgotten. Alternately, they develop a dislike for these parents and move them to the bottom of the priority list. Being aggressive can be positive, in a way, because if you advocate this strongly for yourself, you will probably advocate strongly for your child, as well. And you will need to argue and fight with a lot of teachers, doctors and bureaucrats when you adopt a special needs child. But there's a fine line between being aggressive and being a jerk, and if you cross it, it may reflect very badly on your future parenting skills.
6) Photostruck. These are parents who have seen a particular child in the photolistings and are starting the process for the purpose of adopting them. The workers know that there is almost zero chance they'll be matched with that particular child. Their goal is to gently let down the parents and focus them on adopting other children too. The parents are probably frantic to get their process as down as quickly as possible so they can adopt that particular child, and the workers may become irritated with their urgency and give up on treating them gently.

Some Categories of Parents with Specific Problems

Criminal Records

You're going to get fingerprinted and have a background check. How clean do you need to be? What we were told at our agency is that everything was examined on a case by case basis. Anything very violent or anything directed at children is going to disqualify you, of course.

I don't know what to tell people with serious convictions. But I do have some advice for the large population of Americans who've had light brushes with the law. First, the criminal justice system disproportionately targets minorities and poorer people. Second, drug offenses are incredibly common, even for richer white people. Strictly enforcing a no-criminal-convictions-whatsoever rule would be racist and classist, and most social workers recognize this.

My husband had a drug conviction from when he was 18. He fessed up, and our agency asked him to write an addendum explaining what he learned from the experience. He included the sentence "I learned I wouldn't make a good criminal" at the end, but I edited that out because it sounded way too flippant.

I was arrested for shoplifting when I was 15. I did my community service and my record was sealed when I was 18. I don't think this has any bearing whatsoever on my fitness as a parent, so I didn't include it. I would also recommend not sharing any similar juvenile misdemeanors. If the records are sealed, there's no legal requirement to do so.

Having a checkered juvenile history might even help you if you're adopting an older child with a similar history. Hopefully, you also have a documented record, since then, of helping young people avoid similar mistakes. If not, start creating one. Otherwise, having any kind of record is going to be neutral at best, and be another reason to disqualify you for a particular child, or move your homestudy further down the pile.

LGBT

The scale of family desirability for social workers goes something like this: hetero couple > single woman > lesbian couple > gay couple > single dad.

If you're a gay single man or woman, I guess an important question is how much of your sexuality to disclose. But I have a feeling that most social workers assume single dads are gay, anyway, unless proven otherwise.

If you're a couple, you have to work very closely with the agency on how to manage this. Your agency choice is going to be especially important. In some states, gay people cannot adopt at all. Florida's ban may be changing soon, hopefully. This link contains some helpful resources to determine laws in your area. If you live in an especially regressive state, maybe you should consider moving. I know that's a hurtful thing to say, and might involve separation from your roots and other family, but in practical terms, it might be the most reliable way to start your own family.

I really wish I could provide a link to specifically transgender resources. I looked, but haven't been able to find anything.

If you sign with a decent agency, they'll support you and try to work around any homophobic social workers. They'll also be honest with you about your chances and avoid creating false hopes. Your status may help you in terms of adopting older LGBT children, but only if conditions are right. Otherwise, any random homophobic worker you submit your homestudy to will sabotage it.

On the bright side, many gay and lesbian couples successfully adopt from foster care. If you read the first report I linked to, you'll see that less same-sex couples drop out before placement! Some of this must be because LGBT parents know they have fewer options, so they work harder and don't give up as easily.

Non-Christian

The vast majority of children are going to be from a Christian background. Not being Christian is a major, major handicap. The foster care system pretends to be secular, but in most areas, it's really not.

This wasn't a serious problem for me to deal with. Neither of us are Christian, but we joined a liberal congregation that doesn't require any particular belief system. I realize that for other non-Christians, this can be a really agonizing issue. The advice I'm giving is hurtful and humiliating, but necessary.

Regular church attendance establishes a support network. You have to think about the social function of churches more than the spiritual function. It provides a sense of stability to the family to do at least one thing the same every week. Social workers want to see as many support networks as possible. Most don't really care what you believe. They just want proof that you're connected to some greater community. The majority of Americans do this through churches.

Find a church that allows you to believe what you believe, even if you have to drive an hour to get there. If you don't like services, find some other way to be associated... maybe do volunteer work for them. Or find an interfaith organization and get involved with them in some regular way.

Beyond and beneath the support network aspect, which I actually agree with, many Christian social workers are prejudiced against non-Christians. I'm not talking about fire-and-brimstone condemnations... it's more subtle than that. Many will doubt your ability to parent a Christian child. I think it's important to prove in some documented way that you don't hate Christians, you like Christians and you're comfortable around Christians.

When your worker brings up these questions for the homestudy, and in your autobiographical statement, don't talk about what you believe, just talk about what you do and what your level of involvement is. That way, you're not lying about anything. And don't overshare.

Maybe in some very liberal places or places with a lot of non-Christians, all this doesn't apply. But if you're submitting your homestudy in any wider area, they will apply.

Race/Ethnicity

I'm not going to give a lot of advice to white people adopting transracially. There are a gazillion other resources for that. My only advice is: do your research, and don't act like a martyr. White couples are at the top of the pile when it comes to family rankings. You're number one for white children, and you're a very close number two for everyone else. Do not complain about how being white hurts your chances, especially in front of black social workers. Yes, I've seen that happen, and it's really pathetic.

If you're black, you have higher chances of being matched to black children, and almost zero chances of being matched to any other race. The big exception is going to be sibling groups. There are a lot of multiracial sibling groups out there. If you're considering that seriously, you should try and have something in your homestudy about your connections to other ethnicities and races.

If you're Latino, and you don't live in a very Latino area, it's hard to give advice. If you're a black Latino, white and black social workers will probably just slot you into the "black" category. Latinos will be sort of preferred for Latino children, but if there aren't many Latino social workers in the area, this preference won't be very strong.

If you're Asian, like me, you've got especially big problems. Outside of Hawaii, there aren't many Asian kids who end up in the photolistings. White (foster or otherwise) parents who say they aren't comfortable adopting black children are frequently just fine with adopting Asian children, so many of them don't get to the photolistings. Nobody really cares about recruiting Asian foster parents or adoptive parents. Any adoption you do is going to be transracial. Black and white social workers don't really know what to do with you. You might exist in a strange Twilight Zone, beating your head against a wall.

If you're Native American, you may have difficult issues in the regular system, depending on your geographical location. But you probably have the additional choice of working with a tribal agency to get placements. Networking with other parents is going to be key.

Interracial couples will experience some combination of these issues. In opposite-sex couples, the mother's race is always going to be more important. Adoption is an intensely female sphere, and adoption social workers are overwhelmingly female. That's true for any of these categories, by the way... the woman's attributes are going to be scrutinized most intensely, and she'll have to do most of the work. I think for same-sex couples, a parallel dynamic applies. One partner will get pegged as more "feminine", therefore more maternal, and given greater scrutiny and responsibility.

Like any other of these barriers, the older the child and the more severe the special need, the less they apply. Social workers for hard-to-place children will often set aside many superficial prejudices because they're desperate to get a match.

Physical and Mental Disability

These can both hurt and help, though mostly it hurts. Having a physical disability means you are very unlikely to get placed with a young child. There will be a questions asked about capable you are of carrying children, bathing them, restraining them in a rage. You can anticipate some of these yourself. What would you do if your child is about to run out into the middle of a busy street? If they start attacking another, smaller child? On the other hand, it may help you in getting placed with another child with a physical disability. For example, having a wheelchair-accessible house.

Mental disability can be neutral, but only if you manage it carefully. Many, many children in the system have mental illness. If you have a history of successfully "dealing" with the illness, and "dealing" is defined in such a way that the social workers accepts it, that shows that you won't be afraid with some of the more common issues that children often present.

In short, these are very serious barriers to adopting younger children, but can be neutral or even positive when adopting older children. Again, don't overshare. What you talk about with your therapist should stay with your therapist. Don't volunteer anything that won't come out on the physical anyway.  Many social workers have prejudices against specific kinds of disabilities.

Choose Your Agency

Once you choose your agency, you'll go through licensing, training, approval and homestudy. This could take a few months, or maybe even a year. It represents a huge investment of time, energy and emotion.

Even if you do tons of research and networking and make a really informed decision, your agency might still be wrong for you. You have to know when to cut your losses and move to another path. Otherwise, the disappointment will crush you.

The agency choice is going to vary enormously according to region. Some basic divisions:

1) Nationwide. I can only think of two: Adopt America Network and WACAP. I personally did not consider WACAP because they don't focus solely on foster care, and also because they charge some amount of money for the homestudy.
2) County. The quality of your county agency is going to vary. They will have a lot of children to place. Many county agencies pressure parents to switch form adoption to fostering, since they usually have greater need for fostering. County workers are also frequently overworked and have little time for hand-holding or supportive advice. Since county agencies are nominally secular, if you're LGBT or non-Christian, they might be your best bet.
3) Private religious agencies. Again, variable. Some of these have restrictions and practices that horrify me. Otherwise are really about as secular in practice as the county agencies, with slightly better resources.
4) Private secular agencies. These are frequently specialized. There are ones for medically fragile children, for sibling groups, for African-American children, for older children and so on.

A smaller agency might give the matching process more care and attention. On the other hand, if you get stuck with a bad social worker, that makes it harder to switch later on.

Don't be a Jerk in Training

No snorting, eyerolling or loudly arguing with the presenter! Yes, I've seen this. Especially when the topic of spanking comes up. I'm not going to elaborate on this too much, but I feel it deserves an entry.

You need to build up as much goodwill as possible in this stage. Later, when you get aggressive and starting calling your social worker every day to bug them about your homestudy, you will need this store of goodwill. Bring food to the trainings, volunteer to help with training-time childcare, do anything you can to make their difficult job a little bit easier.

Write your Autobiographical Statement Carefully and Stay on Top of Your Homestudy

Our first worker was terrible. The homestudy consisted of large chunks of my own autobiographical statement, woven together with sentences full of misspellings, grammar errors and more serious content errors. I gave it back with edits marked in yellow highlighter and red pen and asked her to fix it. She said she did. I believed her. She didn't, and we only found out about six months later.

The most serious problem is that it said we could parent children with "mild" special needs. It should have said "moderate". If I had to write it over again, I would have written "severe", because I realize that quantified need levels are a bunch of garbage due to massive underreporting and overreporting.

When a child's social worker received our homestudy and saw the word "mild", they would throw it in the trash, because all the children we were submitting for were marked as "moderate".

We only started to see movement once our worker left and another, much better one, took over our case and fixed our homestudy. This time I demanded to read it in order to confirm.

Homestudies are not set in stone, even though your worker will probably act like it. You should demand to read yours and look for serious errors. Social workers are very resistent to changing homestudies, but they will do it if you make a strong enough case. Ideally, if you have a friend or relative who is a social worker and knows a lot about the process, see if you can show them your homestudy.

If your homestudy is bad, and doesn't reflect your family strengths, you should leave and start again somewhere else.

Be Realistic and Be Humble

I'm assuming a somewhat combative relationship with social workers. At the beginning of the process, I believed everything they ever said, and looked up to them greatly. I was disappointed. Ultimately, they're just human beings doing a job. Many of them are very young and inexperienced women who entered the field with idealistic goals that have since started to seem rather far away and futile. The system chews them up and spits them up. They stop caring as much. Some of the ones that stay are amazing, some are terrible, most of them mess up a lot but try to do their best.

I don't think you should trust social workers, but until they prove otherwise, respect them. They know more about the process. If a social worker tells you that have a problem -- attitudinal or otherwise -- listen to them with an open mind.

And realize that although the process is humiliating and difficult, it's nothing compared to what your future child may be going through. This is a chance to experience a tiny portion of what they experience: the fear, shame, guilt and uncertainty. You can back out at any time. They can't.

Matching

Well, I ran out of juice, and time. I'll have to continue this later...

ETA: Here's the link to Part II.  I also corrected the comment link in the beginning.

Letter to a Prospective Adoptive Parent Part II

I didn't scare her off with Part I! She emailed me back with lots of questions about the photolistings, some questions about foster care and a few remarks about people she knew who had done international. Here's my response.

Hi [],

I'm happy to help as much as I can. I'll go through your questions with as much detail as possible.

Children who have been neglected and abused have emotional and behavioral problems. Sometimes these problems are too much for a regular foster care home. The next step up is "therapeutic foster care". Therapeutic foster parents have had special training to work with children and help them heal. The next step up after that is residential treatment. For example, if a child is very depressed and harming themselves, they might be placed into a therapeutic foster home, then if the therapeutic parent says the child doesn't seem to be getting better, they are placed under intensive treatment in a residential setting.

As they get better, children are stepped down in the level of care. Children are generally not put up for adoption if they're still in a residential setting or a therapeutic foster home. Ideally, when children are put up for adoption, they are emotionally ready for adoption. Their foster parents and therapists will have prepared them over a period of time about what adoption means.

Unfortunately, things don't work according to the ideal sometimes. If the child is not ready for adoption, or the social worker places them in an adoptive home that turns out to not be compatible, then the adoption is going to disrupt and the child is going to have to go back into foster care. This represents a terrible setback and makes it that much harder for the child to trust anyone ever again. Many of the children in the national photolistings will have been through disrupted adoptions.

Especially if it's a large sibling group or really older children, like teenagers, the standards for matching tend to get relaxed. It's so difficult to find parents for these children that the social workers will take anyone they can get and hope for the best, because otherwise they might not get adopted at all.

The workers want to match children with homes that are prepared for them. This is where it gets complicated:

Parents with no children are at a disadvantage. How can they prove they can handle a lot of the special needs that children in foster care have? On the other hand, I've often heard that parents with no children are a blank slate because they don't have expectations of how a "normal child" is supposed to act, whereas regular parents may have some unrealistic expectations.

We went in one direction. We decided we had a pretty high requirement and could take no more than moderate special needs -- no FASD, ODD or RAD (you'll find out what all these mean if you stay on the path). We ended up with a child who probably has less special needs than stated. However, it took us a year of waiting and applying. We submitted short applications for many children. Many of the children we were applying for had a lot of other parents who wanted to adopt them, so that's why it took so long.

The workers are looking for parents with past success and special experience. For example, if a child has autism or cerebral palsy or multiple sclerosis, maybe one of the parents grew up in a family where there was autism or cerebral palsy or multiple sclerosis.

Our son is doing great and I think the match was really good. But if he had been placed in a home with elderly parents, or a single parent who had to work out of their home a lot, the match probably wouldn't have gone so well. He's extremely active and needs lots of exercise; emotionally, he needs a lot of attention. He has ADHD or ADHD-like symptoms, and I was prepared for that because I have a cousin who had a much more severe form of ADHD.

The photolistings really soft-pedal the issues that the kids have. They don't want to frighten off potential parents too much. Also, it's not a good idea from a privacy perspective to list all the issues a child has on a public website. Once you're approved for foster care adoption, you should be able to access a little more realistic information about the children in the photolistings. Sometimes the language is very coded. "Needs to be the only child" could mean that the child has been sexually aggressive to other children as a result of sexual abuse they have suffered.

On the other hand, it was suggested (but not required) that our son be placed in a smaller family, and he actually does very well with younger children and can play gently with them... but there were so many older children in his foster family that he felt like he had to compete for attention all the time.

Descriptions can underplay issues the children have, but they can also exaggerate and define the children by their diagnoses way too much. Some unscrupulous foster parents will exaggerate the problems their child has in order to get a higher subsidy payment.

Anyway, moving on to foster-to-adopt:

Bio parents often get their children back. Also, their relatives often get the children back instead. Reunification happens much more than adoption. To get your head around the dynamic, imagine if one of your relatives had a baby and then freaked out in some major way, got addicted to something and was sent to jail. What would happen? In the majority of families, a relative would step in and foster care would not be involved, or would only be involved for a short time.

People who do foster-to-adopt with the goal of adoption have to return more babies than they adopt, and they have to deal with that emotionally. I've heard it's very difficult, especially if you don't already have children. The reward is that you made a positive difference in a child's life. I should put you in touch with my son's foster mom, because she's really great, and she's been fostering for a long time. She has adult kids (biological), younger adopted kids and then also foster kids.

The way she approached getting [Sunny] ready for adoption was moving from a mother role to a grandmother kind of role. She told him she will still be in his life, just orbiting at a greater distance.

She lives in another state so we've only visited once so far. We plan on visiting maybe once a year. He talks to her on the phone at least once a week, and we sometimes chat on the webcam for special occasions.

We were planning on establishing a relationship with his biological mom. We had exchanged several letters through the agency. She had problems with addiction but had been doing well lately and everyone said she was on the right track. Sadly, she passed away recently, very unexpectedly. That is why we will probably be adopting [Sunny]'s brother. We've met his maternal family and we'll keep in touch with his grandmother. His father is not a positive person for [Sunny] to know, and he doesn't have any good memories of his father, so we have had no contact there. Once [Sunny]'s a lot older, maybe 16-18, it's going to be up to him if he wants to track down his father and initiate contact. Right now his old foster family is the family that figures most fondly in his memory, and he also misses his biological mom.

Social workers establish the parameters of visitations with bio families until the point of termination of parental rights. Sometimes children have been abandoned and parents will not show up at all, but usually there is some kind of contact. After adoption, the relationship is all up to you. If you foster to adopt, you would probably meet parents during supervised visits. But we didn't meet anyone besides his foster family before getting placed with [Sunny], because their parental rights had already been terminated.

It's rare, but it does happen, that some bio family members are dangerous criminals and in that case foster and adoptive families have to stay anonymous and make sure no identifying info like last names or phone numbers is given out.

Often they are just very depressed and passive people who were trapped in a cycle of abuse themselves as children. Contact with them should be dictated by whether or not it's healthy for the child. If the child was seriously harmed by them, it's better to have a clean break and a fresh start... but there are often other extended family members who can still maintain healthy contact and keep the child connected to their roots. Also, sometimes a parent will turn their life around and become a positive person for the child to have contact with.

As far as wanting to help out bio family, I think the boundaries are made pretty clear to all parties. As a foster parent you're taking care of their children and probably helping reunify them with their children, so asking you for money or non-child-related help is totally out of bounds of the relationship.

As for support: after adopting from foster care, support level really varies. I went with a private (non-county) agency that has great support. We have support group meetings every month and special activities for the children on a quarterly basis. If you go through local counties or states, they will often have nothing and you're on your own. The major help that you get is the subsidy and Medicaid. The subsidy pays for a lot of stuff you need. Medicaid means that if your child develops expensive problems, you usually won't have to pay for the treatment. My son is on a prescription that would have cost us EIGHT HUNDRED DOLLARS to fill, but with Medicaid it's free. Medicaid coverage for psychiatric or behavioral issues is much more comprehensive than what you get would get in a company-sponsored health plan... however, the quality of the providers is not as good and the choice is restricted.

International adoption: I think there are a lot of myths about it. A lot of people believe that children from foreign countries are safe to adopt whereas children from the U.S. are "damaged"... that's totally false. All children are damaged in some way when they're removed from the family they were born into; it never happens for a happy reason. You just have less transparency in a foreign country than you do in America. For example, [Sunny]'s foster mother said a neighboring family next to her adopted a baby girl from Russia. When the girl was 12, she was institutionalized for fetal alcohol spectrum disorder. [Sunny]'s foster mom adopted a child with the same issue... but she knew what she was getting into beforehand, and she had financial support from the state, and her adopted child is doing well enough that I think he'll probably graduate regular school and live independently. International adoption families don't get the education that foster adoptive families here do, they're not as prepared, and they pay vast sums of money and wait many years for uncertain outcomes out of foreign bureaucracies.

Also, like you mention, a lot of people go that route because they don't want to deal with birth families. Frankly, I think that's a very selfish and consumeristic attitude. Many international adoptees feel terrible pain because they will never know who their biological parents are. Especially when they grow up and become parents themselves, they miss knowing that. Being happy about that lack of knowledge does not seem fitting. I am not against all international adoption, but the way it's practiced in America really disturbs me for many reasons.

I'd like to put you in touch with [Sunny]'s foster mom, she could answer a lot of questions about fostering. Since she's not in your state, please keep in mind some legal things are different. Here's a good link for your state:

http://www.nacac.org/ [state profile]

The subsidy levels they list are basic levels. Any special need, even a mild one, will be added on top of that.

Here is a forum with lots of personal stories about adopting from foster care, and tons of FAQs.

http://fosteringandadoptingolderchildren.yuku.com/bfosteringandadoptingolderchildren

Here's a very active Yahoo Group:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/A_O_K/

If you read through the last two you'll hear all kinds of horror stories about what can go wrong. It's important to go into it with eyes open. However, also keep in mind there are many families, like many of the ones I know through my agency, who haven't encounterd a lot of speed bumps and don't post their stories because they have nothing beyond the normal level of family drama.

What kind of times are you available on the phone? If you send me your number, I can ask [Sunny]'s foster mom to give you a call.

Regards,
[atlasien]

Letter to a Prospective Adoptive Parent

I just sent this to a relative of a friend of my husband's who had emailed me about adoption.

She sounded rather lost and frightened in her short email. I wanted to be encouraging, and I've probably failed at that, but at least she'll be a lot more informed after my reply.

Some words are altered for privacy.

Hi []!

I'd be happy to offer advice and point you towards more information.

There are two basic kinds of domestic adoption, private and public (foster care). We went through foster care. Our son [Sunny] is six now, and had been in foster care since the age of two, as his extended family could not or would not take care of him. His social workers started looking for an adoptive family when he was five.

We began our adoption process in late 2006 and weren't matched with [Sunny] until early 2008. It was a very difficult period waiting, but we're very happy because it was all worth it. Right now he is in "pre-adoptive placement" status. This means we are his guardians, but our social worker still supervises us; she visits us once a month. Once [Sunny] has been with us for six months, then we can legally adopt, and then there will be no more visits and we'll have the same legal rights as biological parents.

[Sunny] had some special needs listed, like ADHD, and is on a medication. However, many kids in foster care are on more medication than they need, and we're gradually reducing his medicine. We think he might not need any medication at all eventually. He's doing great in school and we might even get him into a gifted program in a few grades. He's a happy little kid and has so much love to give.

Since we adopted through the state, our adoption is going to be totally free. Our trip expenses visiting his foster family will be reimbursed. We also get a monthly subsidy of $[] from his state. Some of that I'm using for things like his swim and soccer and therapy and tutoring; half of it is going to a college fund.

That's the route we picked. We did what is called a "straight adoption" where there was no fostering period first. We did it that way because we didn't want to go through having to foster many children and return most of them. But fostering first (AKA "foster to adopt") is really how most adoptions in the system get done, and also the only way to adopt an infant. We weren't set on adopting an infant, though. Babies are cute, but not much fun to talk to! [Sunny] being school-aged has worked out great for us. However, we might end up adopting a baby as well, because [Sunny]'s little brother has also entered the foster care system and will probably get placed with us.

Besides the foster care system, there is private infant adoption. Through an agency or independently, mothers who want to voluntarily relinquish their children meet up with adoptive parents. There is a lot of competition to get placed with a baby. The adoptive parents pay large fees and legal expenses. I've heard up to $30,000. I had no interest in this route. There are many problems I saw. For one example, white babies are priced much higher than black babies, which reflects a lot of racism in the system. Many expectant mothers aren't well informed, and regret their decision and suffer from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. I know it's possible for private adoption to be done ethically, and I do think open adoption is usually in the best interests of the child in these kinds of cases. But for me personally, I didn't want to navigate the ethical issues involved in private adoption.

It's impossible for me to tell you exactly what you should do, so I'm just explaining my own process of decision. But here's some general advice. I'm not going to sugarcoat anything. When I was at the start of the process, I really appreciated honest advice, because there is a LOT of misguided stuff out there when it comes to adoption.

It's going to be difficult no matter what you do. If you go private you will have to sell yourself and your family to expectant mothers. If you go foster care, you have to sell yourselves to social workers. The potential humiliation is actually the least of it -- agencies and social workers will routinely lie and screw you over. They often tell you what you want to hear because they think you can't handle the truth. Be prepared, and don't automatically trust anyone. Follow up, verify, do your own research.

Try to let go of your ego. Instead of thinking "can I handle this" or "can I handle that", think "my child will need this or that, and do I have the strength to live up to that crucial responsibility". Adopted children need you to help them keep connections to their roots (in a safe way). Even when they come from a pretty depressing background, they usually still need that connection. My son says he has three moms -- his bio mom, foster mom and me -- and I think that's a healthy way for him to understand his situation.

There are many older waiting children in the system who desperately want parents. Year after year, they wait to be adopted, and eventually they get so old that they have to go out in the world without a family. If you go to [photolisting link] you will see the ones just in [your state].

That's it for now. Let me know if you have any more questions. I'd also recommend looking up internet groups to find other people who are on the same path you might want to take. http://groups.yahoo.com has many specialized groups like that. If you have more specific questions I can also point you towards more resources. Finally, good luck. I'm not going to tell you it's going to be easy, but like I said, I did it and I think it was all worth it!

Regards,
[atlasien]

[Attached: family picture with beaming faces]