[GeeGeeTaylor]

I have had one person tell me about one state to which they offer fantastic "help" if you adopt from that state.

So I was wondering what states people know about....

For example the different things I am interested in knowing about States..

1. Do they offer to pay travel expenses?
2. Do they offer to pay for accomidations?
3. If you travel a great distance, if meeting goes well, do they allow you to take them home this or with one more visit?
*if so what is the minimum distance traveled to these states etc?*
4. UN! Willingness to re-emburse our state PA, for home study process?
5. Are they reluctant to let children move out of state?
6. Are they hard to work with in anyway?
7. Are they low paying/high paying/non paying of support?... PLEASE this is not why we want to adopt, we came into this having no idea that there would be a support recieved, and I actually thought when they told us about the 500-600 a month we would have to pay that! Almost stopped us from proceding till I said "I don't think we can afford to pay that, as well as support them. I didn't know you had to pay every month when you adopt" Boy I felt stupid when our case worker corrected me.... *shakes head*
8. Does their "support" cross to other states? *or doesn't that make any different?*
9. Is there any that make it easier/harder to finalize the adoption?
10. Offer adoption/legal fees paid?
11. Easy to work with if you contact them saying "I have a home study that stay in possesion of our case worker, due to SWAN paying for the study, Would you be willing to at least visit our mini home page and self written profiles to put us on the list and consider us for the child*ren* till we can have our caseworker forward a copy of our study to you?
*I am worried if we do not get our grant to pay for the study, so she can be a free agent, we will be stuck with her as a "state agent" and it is her job to match us in PA!! and discourage us from out of state. Until which time we re-emburse the state.
12. Have I asked enough or shall I come up with more?

And anything else you can think of? I would just like to know the nitty gritty before we start into that stage, and know what states to "ignore" or "prefer" in our searches.

I have heard of situations of all the above in rumors of, diff states that do some or alot of the above, as well as none of the above.

I know this is a topic that the responses will have to be PM.... so publicly thank all that has read and will send me pm's

[skirbo]

Hi there. I think if you take a look at NACAC.org, it will answer a lot of your questions.

The only question I haven't gotten a concrete answer on (and I work for my state child welfare system!) is about medicaid. The question is if state a offers much better medicaid coverage than state b, which is the receiving state, and state b is to administer the medicaid after placement of the child, then which coverage policies are in effect-state a's or state b's?

Even the top dog didn't know.

Good luck!
Sarah

[sundara]

I adopted cross-state (kids were in IA, we are in IL). I don't know which state has "better" medicaid - the end result of our Interstate Compact was that we live in IL so we have IL medicaid coverage for our kids.

My DH and I cover our kids with our health insurance thru work - medicaid is always the backup. This works pretty nice for big bills like hospitalizations, xrays (kids do tend to do silly things like fall off snowboards...!) For us, medicaid has not helped with the therapy bills, as the nearest medicaid provider is too far away to be practical when you have 4 kids in therapy. Also, I wanted to pick the best therapist for them, not whoever the closed MC provider was.

I agree NACAC is a great site - I learned alot from there during my adoption journey and agree that it is a must-see site.

For visits, there is one thing - I would be shocked if any DHS would let you bring the kids home (esp cross-state!) after only one visit. The kids need time to get to know you, and feel comfortable, prior to having them travel to your home. Put yourself in the kids' shoes & you can understand it, because to them, you may be possible new mom & dad, but reality is, you will be strangers to them at that point in time.

Be prepared to make several interstate trips (we made 6 before our kids moved in) and book a hotel room that is large enough for the kids to visit with you there. We brought games, cards, etc so we would have things to do with them.

IA did reimburse our home study & lawyer fees. Our HS was thru a non-profit group, not a state DHS. I don't know if it makes a difference (on reimbursement) if you went thru a state social services group. IA offered to cover travel, but since we drove & stayed at budget hotels like clarion, we decided that they could use that money to help other kids, so we did not file for it even tho they offered.

We got to have 1 home visit (where we brought the kids to our home) prior to them moving in. It was fun to have them visit, but luckily for us our kids can at least laugh at their experience now, as I did not realize that air mattresses get very cold in IL winters (I am originally from CA...). Boy did I blow that one! Thank gosh they forgave us!!

PS It seemed to be a big help in being chosen that we had a connection to the state we were adopting from - we had a reason to go there aside from adoption because my husband has family there. The SW's in IA really liked that, because they felt it would be good for the kids to get to visit their home state on occaision.

[GeeGeeTaylor]

Well I know PA, has a "well start" or something like that program, and it covers EVERYTHING... so I am not to worried about loosing benefits for their medical.

Our health insurance we pay a ton for and it stinks, so will be nice to have that back up plan. For the dental, eye, perscriptions.

My husband is military but, but is a state position in the military so ya... I miss the military benefits at this job *sigh*

PA has great medicade program.. *phew* so I at least don't have to worry about them "loosing" anything by coming here. I know everything they need that way is taken care of, family and love part we have covered... :P

Please don't think I exspect to fly out to Washington, get along on the first visit and them say ok, looks like it matches in person as well as on paper, *joking* here is their interstate passport... "see ya, send us a post card" Just needed examples..

I understand to some points, but I also know that a lot of times the kids put on their... "angel eyes" for these visits, if it's 1 or 100 visits that go like story book times.... and save the true self's for when you get them home. The same is for us visiting them.. We have on our angel eyes... I was reading one poor womans begging for our advice and help that it happened with. Dream children, then they unpacked... *shivers*

[sundara]

The angel eyes thing is true to an extent, but the reason for the visits is to see if the overall personalities seem to be a fit. My kids definitely had people that were interested in them that they did not care for, and the SW's look for that and seemed to listen well, but of course that can vary greatly, depending on the SW.

Trust your instincts - if something seems off, trust yourself. We interviewed for some kids a year prior to meeting our Akids. This prior set was presented to us as a great match, but when we questioned the worker more closely (after driving 300 miles to meet), we were very disappointed to find that the SW had ignored our list of items we were not equipped to deal with - these first kids had nearly every issue on our screen out list! I am so thankful we were strong enough to walk away, as hard as that was to do.

As for kids letting down their hair when they get home, yes that does happen, but when depends on the kids. The longer the abuse, and the more extreme, the longer it can be before they trust enough that they are safe befoe they let their hair down.

We've been through a lot of this in the last year, and we've had our kids for 5 years. The hardest part to realise is that the acting out is because they finally feel safe with you, and somethimes that means you get to deal with all the hard stuff as it all comes out & they try to fine ways to heal, and they often take stuff out on you - doesn't seem fair sometimes, but its true.

After a year of pretty intenste stuff, we are seeing a HUGE amount of healing & change in our kids. Doesn't at all mean this was easy - not at all, it was hard. But then again, I have 4 teenagers, and I have seen a lot of non-adopted kids who have worse behaviors & defiance with their parents than my kids do. It all comes down to realizing that there are no guarantees in life, and that peer pressure is much more powerful these days due to the means available to kids to interact so much more often that weren't there 10 years ago.