Who is involved in adoption

Most adoptions proceed through an adoption agency. Most adoption agencies require that a home study be made as part of a couple's adoption application. Home studies are usually conducted by social workers, who often provide follow-up visits after placement to check on how the adoptive child is doing in his or her new home. While the social worker's primary role is always to protect the best interests of the child, he or she can also become an advocate for the adoptive family, helping them through the adoption process.

Lawyers are often necessary players in adoption proceedings, as they are the only professionals competent to represent adoptive parents before the court that is empowered to make the adoption legal and permanent. Lawyers handle the legal paperwork and court filings that are required in an adoption. Lawyers also sometimes act to coordinate adoptions instead of an adoption agency. Leave this field blank.

Search Search form Search. About , children are prepared for and need permanent homes in the United States. Most are school-aged or older. There are brothers and sisters who need to stay together. Most children ready for adoption live in foster or group homes because their parents were unable to care for them.

Often, personal and family problems made it impossible for the parents to maintain a home for their children. Some of these children have been abused, neglected or abandoned. Most children's agencies can provide more information about a child than they are able to include on a flyer, newspaper article, or website description.

However, some of the child's information is considered confidential, and workers may want to share it only with those families they are seriously considering as adoptive parents.

Once you have been selected for a particular child, adoption agencies are required to share with you any information that they have about the child, with the exception of identifying information about the birth family.

Unfortunately, they may not always have a great deal of information, especially if a child has lived in several foster homes. It is important to ask for whatever is available, including medical reports, results of psychological or educational testing, and information about early development. In order for a child to be adopted, the birth parents have to relinquish legal parental rights.

With most agency adoptions, a child is already legally free for adoption before a placement occurs. Once the adoption has been finalized, the biological parents have no legal tie to the child. The Adoption and Safe Families Act ASFA , passed in , requires state agencies to speed up a child's move from foster care to adoption by establishing time frames for permanency planning and guidelines for when a child must be legally freed for adoption.

The law also removes geographic barriers to adoption by requiring that states not delay or deny a placement if an approved family is available outside the state. This act and subsequent revisions bar any agency from discriminating because of race when considering adoption opportunities for children, if the agency receives federal funding. There are two stages in the adoption process: pre-placement and post-placement.

Placement is when the child enters your home, pre-placement describes the time before and post-placement the time after. There is a pre-placement waiting period for all adoptions. The time frame, like the cost, varies with the type of child being adopted. With a completed homestudy in hand, the process to adopt a child with special needs can often proceed quickly and be completed within a few months.

The wait is typically between two and seven years for a healthy infant. After placement, your agency will have to supervise your family for a legally-mandated length of time before finalization can occur.

Typically this post-placement time period will be no less than six months from the time of placement. Parents who are yearning to share their love and knowledge with children or youth can begin parenting sooner, while waiting for or identifying a match.

Parents and the children placed in their care get a chance to assess whether they could have a permanent attachment to each other. Families can experience parenting children of wide range of ages—from infant to Children make fewer moves.

A child can live with her future adoptive parents, if the parents are also licensed to provide foster care, potentially reducing the amount of time parents must wait before an adoption is finalized. The family begins to bond. Parents gain experience parenting—and especially parenting children who have experienced trauma. Frequently asked questions AdoptUSKids foster care and adoption resource specialists respond to hundreds of questions about foster care and adoption, and an active community of families is always exchanging information on our Facebook page.

If I am only interested in adopting, why should I also get approved to foster? There are several compelling reasons. Your state may require that you do. Being approved as a foster parent when you are matched with a child will allow you to avoid the needless delay of completing additional paperwork and processes before the child can be placed into your home.

Being dual licensed can potentially make your family a more desirable placement, especially when you are applying to adopt a child from another state. This is because the placement of a child can be made more quickly if you have already completed the additional paperwork and approvals to foster. A child placed with you will continue to receive financial support to help meet their needs. You will avoid a potential disruption in assistance that could occur while you become licensed to foster and before you can access any post-adoption financial support that might be available.

Having already been approved to foster will help this placement occur more smoothly and quickly. If your family does not have a lot of parenting experience, your social worker may recommend that you consider fostering so that you better understand the challenges and rewards of parenting a child who has experienced trauma. What is involved in adopting children from another state?

What kind of support is available to families? Can you provide information about international adoption? Things to do next: Read about getting started to become a foster or adoptive parent.