[DannieAS]

In this forum on a.com it is evident that some people absolutely adore agencies and others are really wanting to go through the state...

What lead you to choose which way to go and why? I do tend to hear a lot of negative like comments about going through the foster system/state/county and wonder why is that? I"m wondering if that has anything to do with not knowing the ins and outs of state like systems? For example I know some teachers/professors/my good friend a speech therapist as well all went through the state/county for adoption...I'm wondering if maybe we're not afraid of the system because we know the crap that goes on already????

Is choosing an agency primarily because you would like to adopt an infant instead of an older child toddler-teenager?

I think it's always interesting to know where different people's perspectives on this is. It's so different for everyone, and I do think that this is great!

God bless all of you who have gone through it all and have finalized and to those of us who are going through the steps.

[SupaModel]

I went agency route because I wanted a newborn and I thought at the time it was the only way. Also i thought it was less drama than dealing with the State/ foster care etc....

At first I had been open to older kids but DH was worried about getting a child and dealing with their past "issues". Bascically lots of different reasons but now that I know more maybe I feel differently about some things.

[HappyHopefulMommy]

At first we went with an agency. We also wanted an infant. After 2 years of waiting and 2 failed adoptions we switched to fost/adopt with our county. At this point we now wanted a young sibling set. And also knew several people who had adopted little ones (under 6 months) from foster care. Our experience with both was totally great. I would do fost/adopt again. You can get infants, you just might wait a little longer and I think it is more "risky" than an agency since you usually have to wait a while for TPR.

[mommamarci]

We chose the private route the first 2 times because we wanted babies and wanted them to stay once they came into our home. I knew I could not handle having a baby in my house for a few months before I had a child and we wnated our first 2 kids very close in age.

We are now licensed foster parents. We are hoping we will eventually be able to adopt from foster care. We had planned on a gap of about 3 years between Spencer and our next child. So, our plan is to foster for a couple years. If we are not able to adopt, we will do another private adoption in a couple years.

We are only open to kids birth to age 2, so we may never be able to adopt from foster care. But, we will see what happens.

[minibus]

*Disclaimer: This is MY experience. I am not saying it is like this in every state, every county, or with every child.*

We did agency adoption perhaps because I _do_ understand the ins and outs of the state system. I worked in therapeutic foster care for 4 years and before that, I worked as a therapist with children in the system for 3 years. I saw how difficult the system could be and saw the high needs kids.

We are first time parents who both have careers and want to continue in our careers. Adoption is also a new thing for both our families and the difficulties and interventions many children need are difficult for them to understand.

Given what I had seen about the difficulties that many kids "in the system" face and some of the crazy reunification plans that I saw take place, I didn't want to go that route. We also had the luxury of having saved up some money.

That being said, we didn't go a "traditional" adoption route. We adopted a sibling set, toddler and infant.

[Fran27]

My first choice was foster-to-adopt... But after talking about it with several other people from PA, they told me that it's pretty hard in this state to be able to adopt infants this way, as reunification is often the goal that judges have in mind. I don't know how much of it is true, but we wanted an infant, so we went the agency route.

Now we'll have some parenting experience though and I would love to adopt an older sibling set down the road... but we'd need a bigger house and it won't be for several years anyway, and I really want to preserve the birth order as much as possible so dh might be too old by then anyway (he's 45). We'll see!

[OakShannon]

You never know, Marci. We were open to siblings and kids up to age 5 or 6. But we wanted low legal risk. And who were we matched with? A healthy 3 month old who we adopted 9 months later! So under 2 is not necessarily a barrier. I know several other families who fost-adopted infants as well.

We adopted through foster care because we had several friends who went that route, so it was familiar. And it just felt right. I don't really have any better reason to offer than that. We briefly considered private adoption, but it just didn't feel like the right way for us to go. We are planning to do another fost-adopt when our son is a little older.

[DannieAS]

I think all your comments are awesome and Minibus, I understand the disclaimer. I'm going through the state/county and am loving it so far...but then again, I've known 3 people (all teachers/LSS public school staff) that really hold my county in high praise and I know some people that have struggled with the system in another state...so I think it could depend.

[jjlutefisk]

My friend waited with an agency for a year with no matches and switched to Foster to Adopt. They ended up getting a little boy right home from the hospital after waiting only a few months. They were able to adopt him. About 6 months later, they got 2 girls in foster care - ages 4 month and 18 months. They just adopted them recently. This was all within a year of starting foster care. It can happen. Not to mean that it won't.

We went the traditional agency route because we already had two biological children and wanted more babies. We knew we were adopting transracially but we did want to start with babies.

[Wisdom]

Initially, we planned to go through the state and were approved and received licensing. We got a few calls about placements but didn't feel good about any of them because our primary purpose was to adopt. We didn't want to have a child in our home, begin the steps to pursue adoption and then after having a child with us for a while, have a birth relative step up and decide they want to raise the child. We didn't want to chance experiencing that kind of heartbreak, and that was our primary reason for deciding to go through a private adoption agency. We wanted to adopt an infant and would consider a toddler. One (maybe two, I can't recall) of the calls we got from the state was for a newborn and two others for toddlers (under two years of age). We had to make a decision "now" and needed to get the child that day if we accepted.

[Asha0314]

Hi!
I started out with the state, but I decided to go private because I wanted an infant and I was told there were rarely infants available thru that avenue.

[blessedbybug]

Originally Posted by DannieAS

In this forum on a.com it is evident that some people absolutely adore agencies and others are really wanting to go through the state...

What lead you to choose which way to go and why? I do tend to hear a lot of negative like comments about going through the foster system/state/county and wonder why is that? I"m wondering if that has anything to do with not knowing the ins and outs of state like systems? For example I know some teachers/professors/my good friend a speech therapist as well all went through the state/county for adoption...I'm wondering if maybe we're not afraid of the system because we know the crap that goes on already????

Is choosing an agency primarily because you would like to adopt an infant instead of an older child toddler-teenager?

I think it's always interesting to know where different people's perspectives on this is. It's so different for everyone, and I do think that this is great!

God bless all of you who have gone through it all and have finalized and to those of us who are going through the steps.

Our original plan was to go through children's services in our province. But they took so long to even start our homestudy that after a year, we decided to move to a private agency. DD came to us 20 months after we applied with the agency. In that time, children's services called and we did do a homestudy through them as well, but were approved basically at the same time that DD was born. We went on hold for the year they require.

When DD was a year old, we applied again to the private agency and children's services. DS came to us 15 months after our second application for the private agency, and we were only approved through children's services a few weeks before he came.

The system didn't work for us and as much as we wanted to go through foster care, we just couldn't wait like they required. We felt we needed to move forward with our plans for a family.

We recently made the decision NOT to do foster care (after also being approved as a foster home during the second process mentioned above, then being put on hold after DS came) because even though we had been through the process and approved TWICE with the province in the last five years, and after adopting twice through an agency, parenting children with special needs (transethnic and prenatal exposure, which are both big special needs issues in our area), they wanted us to start completely over. And we were ready and capable to foster now but were honestly, really tired of jumping through the hoops they required to redo things we had already done when our life really hadn't changed that much. It's frustrating that a system that needs families so much to care for the children who need care aren't able to work in a way that attracts families to do the work.

[lisa in venice]

I initially went to thru a private agency becaue the state agency advised us to. My mom was a Social Worker for the state agency so that was my "go to" agency when dh and I started the process. We were in a small state where the state agency required that you begin the process thru a private agency but once you were H/S ready they would consider you for the placement of children in their custody. Now this was 20 years ago and before there were MAPP classes or PRIDE classes.

The second time we had moved to a state where the state agency would not even talk to us because they had a two year back log of uncompleted home studies. We again went to a private agency that placed children in state custody. Third time we were pretty leery of the state because we had had two truly evil and horribly ignorant SW from the state try to take our child in our second adoption (they decided that we were not racially appropriate to raise a biracial child because we were the wrong flavor of biracial. I was Black and dh was white and according to them our dd would not be raised black enough because only with a black father would that happen.

We had been burned as didn't trust them. By # 4 we had gotten over that and had worked with some really cool people from the county and would have worked with them but we did not qualify because of sometimes the kids slept in the same room and we refused to lie about it. The private agencies had no issue but the state did. It is highly unlikely that I would do another adoption but if I did it would be foster/adopt and I would go private again again because of our house. I would be willing to add on or re-arrange but I would also need an agency willing to work with me and the county has proven that it will not while the private agencies will.

[DannieAS]

You know, I'm wondering if people's perspectives on the county/state also has to do with where you live. I can see where if you live in highly populated area/county vs. a smaller one may also have an effect...who knows. I think it's great that people have been able to adopt what they felt was in their heart through different means.

[jp4ga]

We started with the state through foster to adopt. After 3 years and about 10 placements that ended with the children being returned to their parents we switched to private adoption. Many of these children are not back in state care. Our county tends to try for reunification at any cost, and send children home too soon. As soon as we told DFACS we were going to sign up with a private agency they closed our home. We were still more than willing to foster, but they said it was a conflict of interest.

We filed with the private agency in August, and had placement of an already born baby in June.