that surrounds you during this time is necessary and often helpful in making you take the time you should before making this life-changing decision.”
The next list illustrates major steps in the adoptive process, including common core elements of the application and pre-adoptive procedures. Paperwork and other requirements may vary by state, agency and your relationship to the child you want to adopt (i.e. relative caregivers or foster parents may already have completed some of the core requirements).
Steps to Expect
• Complete the agency’s common application form
• Submit completed tax returns, your marriage license (if applicable) and other identifying documents to the agency
• Complete a household budget
• Submit letters of recommendation from friends, family and or/employers
• Complete a criminal background check
• Get a physical and submit vaccination records for existing children
• Complete a self-study, which is generally a set of questions you answer about your personality, relationship with your spouse or partner, family, childhood and how you would parent your adopted older child
• Engage in a home study conducted by the agency which involves agency and home visits
• Complete any required training or reading
PRE-ADOPTIVE TRAINING AND EDUCATION
No one can obtain a degree in parenting, but there are many ways you can prepare for the role. Pre-adoptive parents of older children and teenagers need to be as ready as possible for parenting children who have experienced early adversity. Being prepared for the challenges of older child adoption may decrease your chances of experiencing adoption disruption, wrote the adoption expert David Brodzinsky for the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute.15 Through agency training, independent learning and networking, pre-adoptive parents can ensure they know as much as possible about older child adoption.
It is important that you ask agencies you are interviewing what their training requirements are and how they approach adoptive parent preparation. Pre-adoptive training requirements vary by state. Your adoption agency may require you to attend a set number of training sessions at the agency and/or online as well as read several adoption-related books. Relative caregivers may be exempt from some training requirements or may be able to complete these requirements at a later time (almost all states require at least a criminal background check of relative caregivers, however) since they often have very short notice that the child is being placed in their care.
To be as prepared as possible for adoption, pre-adoptive parents should seek additional training and educational opportunities outside their agency, such as:
• Reading adoption-related websites and blogs
• Registering for online classes or webinars offered by nonprofit organizations
• Joining an adoptive parent support group
• Participating in one or more online discussion forums for adoptive parents (locate areas of the forum where people are discussing older child adoption)
We recommend the websites listed in the appendix for comprehensive and accurate information about domestic older child adoption. The list also includes organizations that offer training and education for prospective, pre-adoptive and adoptive parents.
THE MATCHING PROCESS
Before you find an agency, you can begin learning about waiting children through photo-listing sites. These sites feature children who are legally free for adoption and who are hard to place. On them you will find some information about the child’s interests, background and whether he or she is part of a sibling group. Often you can search for children that belong to a specific age or ethnic/racial group. If you are interested in learning more about a particular child, you will be asked to complete a form that is submitted to the photo-listing agency.
Private adoption organizations or agencies that have a regional or national focus may photo-list waiting children, as do many city, county and state child welfare agencies. When you submit an inquiry about a specific child in whom you are interested, you should receive a phone call shortly from the sponsoring agency which will explain the next steps you need to take to learn more about or meet the child.
Although federal laws have been passed to facilitate interstate adoptions, you may still experience challenges adopting a child from another state. For this reason it may be best for you to begin searching online for a child who has been photo-listed by a public or private agency in your state or region. In working with an agency or organization from another state or region, you may experience delays in getting responses to inquiries about specific children. If you are working with a local agency to complete your home study and other pre-adoptive requirements, your agency may have difficulty obtaining complete and accurate information about a child from another state or region.
In addition to photo-listing waiting children, public agencies may host events where prospective adoptive parents and waiting children can meet and get to know each other in a group setting. These events may be held in conjunction with National Adoption Month (November) and National Foster Care Month (May) to increase the number of prospective adoptive parents of waiting children. If you are interested in attending such an event, call your local child welfare agency to find out if they are holding one.
You may choose to forego using photo-listing services altogether and instead allow your agency to guide the matching process. Your agency may direct you to their own public photo-listing site of waiting children, or ask you to view private listings available only to clients of that agency. Some children are never photo-listed and you simply learn about them from their adoption caseworker. Based on your application materials, your adoption caseworker may talk to you about specific children he or she believes would be a good match for your family. It is especially important that agencies engage teens during the matching process. A good match between adoptive child and parent can decrease the risk of adoption disruption. When choosing an agency, ask whomever you speak with how the agency matches waiting children with prospective parents.
You will only get a few details about the child from a photo-listing service; the in-depth information you need will come from the child’s case files. In order to cope with your child’s needs, issues and problems, you must make every effort to learn all you can about a child’s history of maltreatment, foster care or group home placements and behavioral issues. Your adoption caseworker may review the child’s history with you verbally but you should also examine the case file yourself. The file may include hand-written notes and should date back to his earliest involvement in the system. If you see content that is redacted (blacked out), ask why. After examining the file, ask your counselor additional questions about the child’s behavior, history of maltreatment, relationships with biological family members and foster care placements. Having as much information as possible about your adoptive child can greatly help you be the best parent to that child.
You may also want to speak with the child’s current and/or former foster family to get a more current picture of how he is functioning in a family setting. Beware; some foster families may not be completely forthcoming with information or even willing to speak to you at all, for any number of reasons including lack of interest, a desire to adopt the child themselves or a desire to paint a rosier picture of the child’s behavior so he or she is adopted into a permanent home more quickly. Most foster families will be forthcoming and very helpful. In addition to the foster
