[ohio271]

My family is trying to adopt after a failed adoption. We lost a ton of money. Thus, we have a very limited adoption budget. ($15,000 to $17,000)

We met with an adoption agency yesterday that told us that we should NOT consider trying adoption until we had $60,000 in the saving account. They said it was impossible to adopt with a budget of $15,000 to $17,000.

Since we have experienced this rejection from numerous adoption agencies, I was wondering if the group had any suggestions they could share or PM to me?

We also been rejected by several adoption agencies due to age. They prefer couples that are less than 40 years old. I'm having problems understanding these adoption agencies. I don't know many couples who have completed the entire sequence of infertility treatments, and then a home study, then a failed adoption, and still has $60,000 in the bank and are under 40 years old.

I don't believe that there are very many couples that meet these "requirements."

[eagleswings216]

Personally, I think you need to RUN, not walk, away from that agency - $60,000? I think that is just crazy. We adopted twins for well less than what they are saying, especially when you take into account the adoption tax credit. I know there are lots of good agencies out there that don't charge anywhere near that.

Also, have you considered foster-adopt? That is substantially cheaper.

I don't know what your income is, but some agencies do sliding scale, so that is also something you may want to look into. I can't give you specific resources, but others here may be able to, but I can encourage you to not give up - lots of people over 40 have had success adopting, so you can too if you find the right venue.

[ohio271]

Originally Posted by eagleswings216

Personally, I think you need to RUN, not walk, away from that agency - $60,000? I think that is just crazy. We adopted twins for well less than what they are saying, especially when you take into account the adoption tax credit. I know there are lots of good agencies out there that don't charge anywhere near that.

Also, have you considered foster-adopt? That is substantially cheaper.

I don't know what your income is, but some agencies do sliding scale, so that is also something you may want to look into. I can't give you specific resources, but others here may be able to, but I can encourage you to not give up - lots of people over 40 have had success adopting, so you can too if you find the right venue.

Thanks for your response. I agree with you. Sometimes it is hard not to laugh in the face of some of these so-called adoption professionals.

We looked into foster-adopt, but the local state agency was indicted for violations of federal laws and the state they will not accept new couples for many years while dealing with that mess.

I've heard that some folks over 40 have had success adopting, but we can never find the correct venue.

I hope that someone can stear us in the right direction.

Again, thanks for your response.

[Fatcat]

Either on AdoptUsKids - Children In Foster Care Awaiting Adoption or RainbowKids.com Adoption Information, Support, Child Photolistings, Articles and Resources ?

[ohio271]

Originally Posted by Fatcat

Either on AdoptUsKids - Children In Foster Care Awaiting Adoption or RainbowKids.com Adoption Information, Support, Child Photolistings, Articles and Resources ?

Thanks a bunch for your reply.

In regards to foster adoption and AdoptUSKids, this article pretty much explains our experience with foster adopt/AdoptUSKids

Adoption Scandal: Interstate Barriers Keep Kids in Foster Care
December 11, 2010
Jeff Katz

For many years, I ran an agency in Rhode Island that recruits families to adopt children from the state's child welfare system. Like many similar organizations, we had a waiting child feature on a local TV station.

Following a "Tuesday's Child" spot about a 7-year-old black boy named Justin, I received a call from a woman in Massachusetts. She was a lawyer and her husband, a doctor. Both were black. She explained to me that she and her husband had been considering adoption for several years. They saw Justin on TV. They were moved by his story. They prayed. And they decided that they wanted to adopt this child.

But they never did. Rhode Island was not legally able to provide a "home study" to a Massachusetts family. And Massachusetts would not use precious state resources to prepare a family to adopt a child in another state. This situation repeats itself, every single day, in America. The simple fact is that it is virtually impossible to adopt a foster child across state lines in the United States.

In the most recent year for which we have data, states reported that only 71 children in the entire country were adopted from foster care across state lines by non-relatives. For perspective, the national weather service estimates that 600 Americans are struck by lightning each year.

Despite common misperception, the problem is not the result of a lack of people wanting to adopt a child from foster care. Analysis of the most recent National Survey of Family Growth shows that 600,000 American women were actively trying to adopt a child. The vast majority were willing to adopt the kinds of foster children we label as "hard to place" - black and Hispanic kids, older kids, kids with disabilities. For every black child waiting in foster care to be adopted, there were 12 prospective parents. For every waiting child between 6 and 12, there were 8 prospective parents.

Given the intensity of the need and the number of families that want to adopt, why is interstate adoption so rare? The primary reason is that we do not have a national adoption system. Instead, we have 50 different child welfare systems, each with its own process for adoption eligibility, recruitment, approval, and training.

Even worse, our current system has created profound disincentives for states to facilitate and support adoptions across state lines. In a system where each state is only interested in the well being of their children, states have very strong incentives to keep their families. Each state pays the cost of recruiting and preparing their own families with no compensation if the family adopts a child from another state. In other words, each interstate adoption has a "winner" (the state that sends the child) and a "loser" (the state that receives the child).

In the current system, it makes more sense for a state to keep an in-state family waiting indefinitely than to match them immediately with a waiting child in another state. This issue is particularly significant in large metropolitan areas that straddle state lines such as New York City, Chicago, and Washington D.C.

Incredibly, this win-lose pattern holds true across county lines within many states. North Carolina, for example, has 100 counties. It is extremely difficult for a family in Raleigh to adopt a child in Durham. This gets particularly complicated when you consider the vast number of variables for both prospective parents and waiting children. Parents entering the system do a great deal of soul searching to decide what kind of child they are able to parent. When a pediatric nurse in a small community says she wants to adopt a child with spina bifida or other developmental birth defect, she may wait years before one is available in her community. Meanwhile 50 miles away, in another county, a child waits.

It is a national scandal that 25,000 children age out of foster care each year while willing adoptive parents are ignored because they are in the wrong state or even the wrong county. It shouldn't be harder for a New Jersey family to adopt a child from Manhattan than Moscow. We must change the incentives in our adoption system so that everyone wins when a hurt child finds a forever family.

Jeff Katz: Adoption Scandal: Interstate Barriers Keep Kids in Foster Care

I wish our experience did not mirror this article. I wish that the foster care system did NOT have so many dis-incentives. I really wish we could grow our family through foster care adoption, but that has not been our experience to date.

I really wish our family was NOT so bad at adoption. I would really wish someone could make this process easier and in some ways more fair to the folks battling infertility.

[anilorak13ska]

ohio - I've PMed you my thoughts, but now I see you've already looked into fost-adopt.... does your area take new families to foster? This may be an option, albeit certainly a heart-wrenching one. We figured in adoption, you either loose a lot of money, a lot of time, your heart, or all three. Either way, there's no way to arrive at your destination without sacrifice. We chose to risk our heart once and decided not to do it again. Others risk it several times, and do eventually adopt their foster children, and do so essentially for free.

As for the article you quote, I agree that there is so much talk about "needing" more families, but what they really want are families for teenagers or kids with severe special needs, or very large sibling groups. And please do NOT tell me that it is hard to place a Hispanic child (addressing the article here!) bc we tried to adopt a Hispanic or multiracial waiting child from foster care for nearly a year and a half. I have first hand experience with the sort of corruption and "just another day at the office" attitude of those who work with the DSS (foster parents included). It's all one big game to them, it seems, wrapped up in pretty faux "child's best interest" wrapping. Our criteria was not super restrictive, yet no agency wanted to work with us bc our age was too low (8yo), we didn't want enough sibs (we said 2), the ethnicity wasn't right (we wanted Hispanic or multiracial), and the needs weren't severe enough. We had no choice but to go international.

Which reminds me.... ohio, I have seen international adoption programs for about $17,000 (I believe this was Colombia, whose wait time is about 4 years, fyi), plus travel. It would seem to me that if you have had it domestically, and I know the last thing you want to hear is that you need to save more money after what you've been through, but if you could save about $5K or so more, you very well could adopt internationally. Now, I don't know if the age thing plus the fees plus your criteria overlap, but don't discount international automatically.

My point is, you have not yet exhausted all of your options. You just need to do something completely different, look at this from a completely different angle, regroup and press on.

[ruth74]

It is possible; it may take a little longer. There are also some agencies that include birthmother expenses in the agency fee, so you don't lose any money if you were to have a second failed adoption. Also, if you are willing to consider not just an infant, some agencies do private (non-DHHS) adoptions of older children as well, which is frequently less expensive.

One other thing to think about is the tax credit; could you consider taking out a loan that you could pay back with the tax credit, increasing your budget a little?

You may also want to check into grants for adoption. There aren't a whole lot of them, but there are a few, and having a previous failed adoption puts you higher up on the list to be considered.

[HopefulMom2bee]

$60,000???? What?! We didn't even have $10,000 in the bank when we started and in the end we payed out less then $20k to our agency. There ARE grants and loans available for hopeful adoptive families. I agree with a PP who said you might want to turn and run!

ETA: We went through a failed adoption too prior to bring our DD home where we lost $5,000+. I'm not sure how much you lost, but you can continue with your dreams. Don't give up!

[rd200]

60 k - seriously???? thats outrageous!!! ours will cost $16K approx and i think thats more than enuf. dont let your age discourage u im sure theres an agency out there that works w/ couples your age. ill pm u my agency,not forsure if they accept over 40. I never asked, we were only late 20's. One thing i will say is that with a limited budget you also need to find an agency that isnt going to promote extraordinary amount of living expenses for emoms. We arent paying any expenses and we still got picked. Espiecally since you have a small budget, paying expenses will probably automatically be out, so when calling an agency i would ask about the typical amount of expenses that they see. Good luck, keep trying, it will happen. Rach

[powderpiggy]

60K is seriously ludicrous. Have you looked into independent adoption (private adoption). We did not use an agency, rather hired an adoption attorney and advertised our profile on parent profiles and adoptionopen.com. (I think I can say the names right?). Our adoption including everything..that is travel, 800 number, website fees, legal fees,etc cost 12,000 of which we received everything back in tax credit. DS's adoption happened much quicker than I ever imagined it would and DH was over 40.

There are a few states where private adoptions are not allowed, but if you are not in one of those, you could consider it. There are pro's and con's to not working with an agency. Send me a PM if you want to know more about our experience. Good Luck.