Adopting From Fostercare

Adoption through foster care-- adoption in your own state.

This involves getting a foster care license and then ONLY taking children that are in the age range you wish to adopt no matter how sad the situation.

The other thing you can do is email every social worker you can locate in the states you are searching in. Let them know exactly what you are looking for. Write a family profile like a birth family letter but specific to the sorts of children you're seeking and outline what you don't want. If you connect with the right social worker, when kids come into care they'll remember you and contact you before a child goes into the photo listings. Make a family profile in pictures and include it in your homestudy. If
you're a state where you are allowed copies of your home study, make a hundred copies of your homestudy at a time, and send it out everywhere you are asked. Then follow up once a month with a phone call. Keep a telephone log and get each person's name, address, phone and fax number. Put it all in a binder. Document who you spoke to and when.


I suggest you stay away from children with Reactive Attachment Disorder, Conduct Disorder, bi polar, and Oppositional Defiant Disorder. The long term prognosis for these children is poor and no amount of love will repair that deep level of trauma. Unless you  have special training these children can utterly destroy your family, your marriage and your life. Most grow up to have personality disorders and continue to create havoc everywhere.

The other resort you have is to go over seas. Haiti has lots of young children. Fees are pretty reasonable. Contact me if you want info on a couple of ethical agencies with reasonable fees. Hundreds of families give up every year and do just this. AT least then they know when they will have
their children in their arms.

Once foster parent, relative and step parent adoptions are taken out of the numbers, less than 10,000 adoptions occur from the state system in the entire country each year according to the National Adoption Information Clearinghouse! That's absolutely despicable with over 200,000 waiting
children and a half million in the foster care system. It is not a priority to anyone.

What you can do to change it? Write a letter to President Bush. Write a letter to your congressman. Write one letter each week! Insist that workers make it a priority to move children out of foster care and into permanent homes.

Deedee Anderson

Adoptive Families Home

Articles Home