[jml]

My husband and I are looking into foster adoption as well as open adoption. Our biggest fear is getting a child and then having it taken away while waiting for the adoption to be finalized, is this something to be concerned about? We are new to this and after 5 failed pregnancies we're not sure if we could handle it.

[DianeS]

Absolutely it is! Another name for foster-adoption is "legal risk adoption", because it does involve some legal risk.

What happens is that children come into foster care, the worker believes the case will ultimately end in adoption, so the child is placed into a foster-adopt home, then the court case progresses, and usually the parents' rights are terminated and then the court date can be set for the adoption to be finalized.

Caseworkers often try their best to only place children into the foster-adopt program if that caseworker believes that the child's case will go to adoption. But that's foretelling the future, and nobody can guess correctly 100% of the time.

And even if time shows the worker has guessed correctly, the court case to terminate the parents' rights has NOT finished yet, and there will be many emotional ups and downs through that. The children in the foster-adopt program still have legal parents who are not you, and you must support their visitations, court appearances, etc with their biological parents.

The better stats your agency has about adoptions by foster parents of children in the foster-adopt program, the less you have to worry. But that possibility will always be there, even if only 1% or fewer of children in that program are returned to biological family.

The program you may want to explore is Straight Adoption from Foster Care. That is when a potential adoptive family is only willing to be placed with a child whose parents have already lost their rights to parent. Children in this program are usually older, as the court case can drag on for several years after the child enters foster care. And they usually have issues similar to the children in the foster-adopt program - almost all children in foster care have been abused or neglected. So whichever you choose to look into, be sure you do your research. Comparing adopting a child from foster care with adopting a child from a loving birthmother is like comparing apples and oranges.

Good luck in your decisions!

[HappyMomAnna]

Ditto to everything that DianeS has said.

I will add only that it is possible to Straight Adopt siblings from the state and experience both an older child as well as that childs younger and often still infant sibling--However the down side to this is that it can be a hundred times more difficult to deal with more then one child at a time....

[Makareina]

[jml]

Thanks for your replies! I'm so glad I registered here. You helped us tremendously!!