Porter holding Gracie for the first time.
I have been getting a couple of hits each day from people searching for domestic adoption information so I’m going to post here in a brief sense what we went through when we decided to adopt domestically. This is assuming that you’ve already decided to adopt domestically and have decided to begin the first steps. We chose Families First out of Atlanta Georgia for our homestudy and we used CASI Foundation for Children to outsource our profile to several different agencies (I’ll explain this all better below) hoping to be placed with a birth family quicker. The adoption agency that had our profile and whose birth parents chose us was out of Dallas, Texas and called Adoption Access.
First off, you need to find the adoption agency that you want to use for your homestudy. Without a completed homestudy, it’s hard to even begin the initial process with your adoption agency. This consists of finding a local agency that complete homestudies for out of state agencies and is accepted by the agency you want to use for placement if these are not one in the same. Most agencies do this. You contact them and they place you with a caseworker. You then get MOUNDS AND MOUNDS of paperwork that you have to complete. It’s basically a full background check on yourself, that you do. You fill out all the paperwork and return it to your homestudy agency. Also, let me note here that your homestudy agency and your placement agency can be the same. You pay half of the fee to the caseworker and thus begins your homestudy. First, the caseworker comes to your home and meets with you. Our caseworker, Joyce came into our home and really gave it a look over. They go into your garage, your basement, all of your bedrooms, bathrooms and closets. Anything that seems dangerous (like the stairs, or chemicals in the cabinets, etc.) they mention to you and ask what you plan to do when the baby comes. We already had a two year old at the time so we were partly past the infant/crawling/curious stage and into the toddler/walking/curious stage. We showed her our gates and other baby proofing items that we had had in place when Porter was younger and insured her that we were going to reinstall everything.
After that inital meeting, we were then instructed to complete three follow up meetings with Joyce. One that would take place with just my husband, one with me and then one final one together. After that she took all of the information we had given her, along with her write-ups from our meetings and compiled a report based on her belief that we were prepared to adopt.
We were also instructed to perform a set number of hours in PiP classes, Parents in Process. These training classes are invaluable as they really get you ready to address all of your concerns when it comes to adopting. Everything from this being your first child or how this child will respond to siblings, to inter-racial issues and even how to deal with the impending time when you begin (hopefully at birth) to connect with your child and the issues of their adoption.
After the paperwork is approved, you send several copies to your placement agency.
Next you go to see the DOC! That’s right folks, you have to get a full exam including a full blood work up that includes an AIDS test. After that you send that certified report to your placement agency and then you go see the government. That’s right, FINGERPRINTS. And this includes two sets of fingerprints, one for the state and one for the FBI. Those of you who don’t want the FBI having your fingerprints on file are going to have to get over that one if you want to adopt.
Once all of that is completed and sent to your placement agency you now get to do the fun part. Making your parent profile! There are many ways to do this, I’ll tell you how I did mine but each one is unique and it’s up to you to do it however you choose. First off, we wrote a letter to the birth parents to explain to them why we wanted to adopt. Then Eric and I each wrote a letter about the other person explaining why they were our life mate and what made them unique. Then I took colorful sheets of stock paper from Hobby Lobby and made what you might call scrapbook pages. I printed out on lables what each sheet was about, then a quick four or five sentances telling the birth parents what the pictures were about. Then I placed each picture onto card stock and cut out the edges with different shaped sissors. When that was completed, I took the entire booklet (about 20 pages) to Kinko’s and had them color copied and bound with plastic with a clear front cover. It was costly but I waited for sales and made sure that I clipped coupons or bought my card stock when it was half priced.
I can’t say if it’s because I was adopted, and/or the fact that we were requesting an African American female, and/or because of my parent profile but we were chosen a little over a month after our paperwork was completed with our homestudy and sent to our placement agency. We decided to adopt in February of 2006 and Gracie was born and in our arms on July 15, 2006. I’ll post on that experience later. Once we were given Gracie, our agency printed out some paperwork for us saying that we were temporary guardians of Grace until our final legal paperwork went through with our state. However, we did have to go into a holding period while in Texas waiting on our paperwork with the ICPC which is the Interstate Compact for Placement of Children which has to be signed by a judge before you can travel across state lines with your child. This can take anywhere from a few days to a few weeks so be prepared to stay put!
After you are placed with the child you will have several follow up interviews with your caseworker where they come to see the child, make sure you are taking good care of the child (don’t be offended) and to see if you are having any questions or concerns.
Also, you will need to now have a lawyer who can finalize your adoption for you. Usually your caseworker can refer you to someone. You will eventually get your child’s birth certificate in the mail with her birth parents on it. You will then need to send it back to Texas with the proper paperwork requesting that they change the birth parents names on the certificate to your name(s). Once you have that corrected birth certificate (request several copies as you will need to file them with your agency and with the state you live in when you petition the court for custody.) Then you will have a court date and you will stand before a judge and they will replace custody of the child from the agency and into your name legally.
As I said, this is a brief overview so don’t expect it to be exactly what you’ll have to go through and realize that laws and regulation vary by state and by year. Hopefully if you’re just beginning the process, this will give you a concise idea of what your next several months are going to be like. That said. . . here are some pointers from me to you.
1) If you choose to go with an agency that outsources, you have a greater chance of getting yourself out there with multiple agencies having access to your profile. The pro is that you’re all over the place instead of being confined to one agencies list of birth parents. The con is that 1) you’re not going to know WHERE your baby is going to be born unless your birth mother chooses you while pregnant. So if taking time off suddenly is not feasible for your lifestyle, then that’s probably not going to work and 2) you will have had no contact with the agency whose birth family chooses you prior to you getting chosen. In our case, the birth parents did not realize that they were the ones who choose the adopted family. SO, we got a call after Gracie was born and not during the pregnancy. Because of this I was dealing with people I had never even known before and we were right in an intense part of the adoption process.
2) You NEVER know when that baby is going to be here so be prepared! As I stated above, we were not chosen when the birth mother was pregnant so we were ill prepared to find out that a little more then a month later we were parents of another baby. We were actually in Florida on vacation when we got the call. We had to drive around the city until we found a place that had internet access to even view the paperwork on the birth parents and see pictures of our daughter. Here Eric and I were, huddled up in the back seat of my minivan holding the laptop up with one hand in the air and the other foot out of the window, because it got better reception that way, hoping no security guard was gonna come out of the Holiday Inn and charge us with stealing internet access. Also, we had no clothes for this baby when we landed, no bottles, no wipes, no diapers and NO CAR SEAT to get the baby home. We were able to borrow one from the agency. So be prepared, especially if you travel personally for the event that you get called and your baby has been born. You must have enough on you that you are able to. Thus leading to #4, keep your big ass traveling file cabinet WITH YOU AT ALL TIMES.
3) Expect to do everything more then once. There were several times when the ball was dropped and something wasn’t faxed or received or emailed. There was a crucial piece of email that I found out had not been sent as I was about to board the plane from Orlando, FL to Dallas, TX. Without this, my agency couldn’t release custody to me even though the baby was with a foster mother AT THE AIRPORT waiting to hand her over to us. Luckily it all got done but with several hands in the pot, you have to be the proactive one to make sure that all t’s are crossed, all i’s are dotted. Also, get an account with FedEx or UPS and send everything out with a return request or confirmation. This way you KNOW that you sent it and you know who signed for it and when.
4) Go to an office supply store and get one of those big ass traveling file folders. Mine has a clasps, several hanging folders inside and then I used several manilla folders while I was working. It also had a handle on it which was very useful. This thing is probably the size of two briefcases and you really do need it. You’ve always got to have copies of everything.
5) When you get fingerprinted, go ahead and get some extra ones done. It doesn’t cost much but the hassle (especially if you have a child already like we did) is more then worth it in the end. If a set gets lost or the placing agency needs a copy, you’ve got one right there without having to rush to the courthouse to try and get in line for another set.
6) One thing I did: Gracie was born in July but her birth certificate didn’t come until November. We were really hoping to get her adoption finalized before the end of the year because there is a substantial tax credit that is applied to your return but only in the year that the adoption is finalized. Since our adoption was so quick, we were really hoping to get into the courts before the end of the year as we had incurred all of our costs within a few short months. When Gracie’s original birth certificate came, I sent back the paperwork to Texas with a picture of Gracie and a little note explaining how much we loved her and how special she was to us. I received in the mail, from Texas, her corrected birth certificate within a week even though I was told it would take 6-8 weeks. I don’t know if it helped but it certainly didn’t hurt.
So that’s all I can think of now. I’ll update this and change the color if I come up with anything else as to not flood the site with the same types of posts. If you are still reading this (yea I said condensed version) then you must be truly serious and I wish you all the happiness in the world when you get to the point where all the paperwork in the world was worth that baby in your arms.
Peace.
