[mustangmom]

Im new hear and was wondering if anyone has any advise on foster/Adopt vs Adopting International. My husband and I just spent the last 10 months getting licensed to foster/adopt. We have 10 & 11 yr olds, and are really excited and would like to adopt a 2-6 year old boy. We have a lot of time and love to spend with this child however, do not know if we can handle really high needs, now that we are through the process it seems that there are 1-2 kids in our range with extreme delays and high needs. We wanted to adopt domestaclly but now are not sure if we made the right call and will be able to find the right child for us. Is it better to go international or is there hope in waiting for the right child domestically?

Any insight would be much appreciated!!!!

[OakShannon]

If you are already licensed to fost/adopt, I wouldn't change course so soon. Matching can be hard, but there are a lot of kids out there and it is absolutely possible to find the right child for your family. I'm sure you and your husband have thought carefully about what issues you feel capable of dealing with and what you feel is beyond you. Keep that in mind, because it can be an emotional process and in my experience social workers will try to nudge you to be more open. Often, I don't think they are trying to be dishonest or disrespectful - but they are trying to find homes for children who are hard to place.

I am doing fost/adopt and we have a very healthy baby boy. We were originally open to ages 0-5 and some special needs - but we were matched with a healthy infant. I know many other people who have adopted children who need extra care because of the adjustment to a new home and past trauma - but who do integrate into their new home and are not "high needs" if by that you mean developmental delay or attachment disorders, etc. There are challenges to fost/adopt, but the right child for your family is out there if you are willing to be patient. (I know - easier said than done!) In my opinion, the hardest part is actually waiting to know if the child will stay in your home.

Feel free to PM me if you have other questions.

[lovemy6]

Children are children, regardless of where they're from. Just bc you spend money on an IA, doesn't mean you're not going to get a special needs child. Foster adoption is risky if you're hoping to adopt, bc the courts give bioparents chance after chance to reunify with the kids. We RU 11 kids before our forever kids were placed with us. We wanted to adopt one more time, but quit after 23 foster children. There are pros and cons for each type of adoption.

[hesabanana]

I have actually done both. So has MommytoEli, so you may want to seek out her opinion.
We adopted our very first foster placement, a healthy baby boy. His sister was placed with us when she was two months old, she was medically fragile and considered special needs. We were told both would be TPR'd and we committed to adopting them. However, things changed AS THEY OFTEN DO IN FOSTER TO ADOPT, and she was ru'd with her bmom a month before we adopted her brother. We wanted more children but could not bear going through that again, so we looked to IA. I now have two Guatemalan children in addition to my foster to adopt son.
For me, I thought I went into foster to adopt with realistic expectations, but no one could have prepared me for what happened in our case. It was the worst two years of my life. I have worked in a lot of systems, prison even (I am a social worker myself), but never have I seen anything as dysfunctional as my local Childrens Services system. People don't believe me when I tell them the things case workers told me, substance abuse counselors did...lying, covering up for the bmom's drug use, telling us to buy a house to accommodate another child, one day he's staying and the next day he's going, literally...just sick. I could not bear to put myself, and more importantly my son (who still has the emotional scars from losing his sister) through it again. I looked at the cost as the price I was willing to pay to avoid the craziness we went through to adopt Ryan.
As an aside, we are still licensed to foster and adopt...we keep it up in case his sister ever comes back in to care. That is the only way we would do it again.
I don't mean to be a big downer. I know lots of people have had great foster/adopt experiences, but mine was not one of them.

[Sohmakun]

I also agree with lovemy6 , just because you pay high fees and the children are in more desperate situations it doesn't guarantee a non-special needs child. And like hesabanna pointed out in international adoption the timeframes and process are more predictable. If you adopt internationally you could probably finish the whole process in one year because you are open to a child that would be considered very old in most countries. Domestic adoption, God knows how long it would take! If the rules change from that country, you will usually be alerted ahead of time (that's if your working with a reputable agency though) before you send in your paperwork. With the expection of Korea, India, Columbia and the Phillipines medical infomation on you child may be inacuarate or incomplete. Since most of the children adopted internationally are abandoned, you will have little if any infomation on your child's birthfamily. So if your child's family had a mental health disorder or borderline mental retardation, you would never know.

Long and short I say do what your heart/God/Allah etc. is telling you. Do you think you could afford to shell out at least $20,000 dollars for one child? Could you handle the emotional roller coaster ride and red tape in the foster care system?

[Larue]

Congrats on obtaining your foster/adopt license. As far as international adoption, on the down side, as some of the other posters alluded, these children may have the same "special needs" as older children adopted through the foster care system. It just may not be spelled out in black and white in a detailed report. On the plus side, there are quite a few children in the age range you mentioned, especially boys, available through international adoption. And many countries expedite the process for older child placements. Which country programs are you interested in? I have researched a number of them and may be able to provide more insights.

Congrats again on obtaining your license. And best wishes with your decision and journey!

[lisa in venice]

I think it depends on how they do foster-adopt in your county or at your agency. If they are ONLY placing kids who are very likely to become legally free then I would choose foster-adopt over IA in a heart beat. In fact we did, three times!

There are two views of foster adopt. One is that foster adopt families are just foster families who are willing to take the child if every chance of reunification does not work. In some states reunification is ALWAYS the plan and not permanence. In other places the policy is to ONLY place kids in foster adopt when reunification is very unlikely to work. Here in LA county over 90% of kids placed by this county and an even higher percentage placed by private agencies in foster-adopt have adoption finalized within a year to a year and a half. There are still MANY, many children in fostercare who aren't legally freed for a very long time and after many reunification attempts but for the thousands who go straight into foster-adopt and their families the process is pretty straight forward.

In this state permanence is the first and foremost goal and not reunification at any cost. For instance if a child is born with a positive tox screen and it is discovered that they have two or more siblings already in the system where the reunification plan has not worked the state first tries to find relatives, then family friends then if all else fails they start the termination process and find a foster adopt family. There are other situations where reunification is unlikely, two of my kids had their birth parents relinquish and they only agreed to do that because they were guaranteed a permanent family not a temporary situation. One had no choice to parent (many kids in the system and did drugs during the pg) The state was taking custody the only choice was where the baby would go, into foster care where the state chose while they worked the reunification plan or into an adoptive home that the birth mother chose (with state approval).

There are agencies and SW who really believe that people who do foster-adopt are suspect because they do it to build families and not as a public service.
IMO motivation for being a foster parent should not disqualify you being matched with a child who needs permanent placement but agencies believe that you need to "pay dues" (take kids that are in the reunification process) before they will place a child for adoption. If this is the kind of thing you are dealing with and you can't find anyone locally whose policy is about permanency I would go for IA. There are down sides to older children in IA. Not only is it far more expensive but an older child is likely to come to you with all of the issues of a foster-adopt child with a language barrier, culture shock and no ongoing support from the agency or state. I that in some places it is just too hard to make foster-adopt work and at some point you just need to do what is best for you family and if that means IA I say go for it.