[Debralous]

We have been approved for special needs adoption since end of June 08 and have inquired on maybe 15 children / sib groups since then. We have a 5 yo DD in the home which makes finding a good fit harder. We have our final FC licensing meeting tomorrow and hoping that will open up some possibilities.

I know many here have posted that CW will gild the lily about issues to make a placement, but our experience is the opposite...they say they don't think it's a good fit when we feel it could be. Of course, that's just based on the limited info we are given. Even though we feel we've mastered the profile "code" and reading between the lines, I guess we have to take on faith they know more than we do what is best.

I'm wondering how many children did you inquire on before getting a placement?

Debra

[lovemy6]

What age group are you looking for your child/ren in? We were foster to adopt for two years, then went straight adoption for a year.

We sent out over 100 homestudies on kids listed. Of those, we heard back from maybe 40 sw's. They sent us more info on the kids and many had issues beyond what we could handle. Our ages were girls up to 10, brothers up to age 12. Our sons were late teens at the time.

We went to committee on three of the kids. We weren't chosen for any of them

Finally after a year we went back to foster to adopt and had children placed with us immediately. We had 11 kids in all placed until we found our forever kids.

[Debralous]

We are hoping for 1 or preferably 2 (I'm still working on DH to accept 3! LOL) age 3-11. We'd like one sib closer to our DD, flexible on 2nd sib. Our agency won't do out of state placements so we are "limited" in that way as well. Our only behavioral requirement is no history of acting out sexually and no extreme agression (extreme as in attacking with weapons type extreme). Most listings we can rule out as "must be only or youngest". The closest we had was a sib group of 2 boys we were going to committe for, but they ended up being place with 2 other sibs so that was best for them.

We keep telling our selves that when its meant to be it will be.

[jeffw]

3 to 11. You can bet you'll end up with the high end. They won't waste your willingness on a toddler when there are so many who will only consider those.

By only being able to stay in-state you are fishing from a much smaller pool. The age of your kids is certainly a hurdle. My experience is that many social workers won't even consider placing an older kid when a younger one is present, regardless of the kid's histories and profiles. Tolerance for this also seems to vary from state to state. The don't tend to pay nearly as much attention to this principle when making foster placements.

We successfully adopted kids older than our others but they ended up crossing state lines. The referral only took about a month.

[Debralous]

Jeff, thanks for sharing your experience. We would actually prefer the older end but didn't want to rule out sib groups with one older/one younger. We have run into that "prejudice" also...but in our situation our DD is the baby of the family (8 cousins, next youngest is 10yo) and would be more displaced by having a younger child come in.

If only we'd known the questions to ask about interstate at the beginnning. We are giving it a year at this agency then switching in order to "fish the larger pool" so to speak. I try not to look at the national photolistings because there are so many kids I'd love to inquire on and can't.

[jeffw]

Deb, your story sounds very similar to ours when we started. We have younger kids and wanted older. We initially went through Health & Welfare to get training and a home study. That kept us in state. They didn't seem to know very well what they were doing. All of our inquiries went nowhere for over a year. Then we switched to an agency that let us go anywhere. My wife inquired on a bunch of kids and we had a referral within a month. Then the placement took about 6 months (Nobody seems to work at Texas DCPS in the summer).

We haven't had any trouble with the age difference. Our two are quite gentle, even the one with attachment issues. He rages but it is all a show. He pulls back before he hits anything. He accidentally ripped his shirt once during a rage and it surprised him. He stopped instantly and then glanced around to see if anyone saw. Still, we keep a close eye on things.

We have 4 boys--adopted siblings who are 10, 11 and birth kids who are 5 and 6. In a way they are a great match. The 5 and 10 year olds have about the same maturity level. The 6 and 11 year olds have about the same physical ability, at least for now.

[Barksum]

We didn't adopt older children, so...who knows if the age will make a difference in the time line. I would think that the older you were willing to go the faster you'd be matched (depending on the kinds of things you can deal with, etc.) but you just never know. We adopted a 2 year old, then a 1 year old, then another one year old, and then ANOTHER 1 year old. We only looked for kids younger than ours, so the age level really kept going down with every adoption. We adopted all but one in our own state, and the one out of state was a relative.

Our bio child was also the youngest of many cousins on both sides of the family. She did adjust to having younger sibs. I think that having ANY sibs join the family calls for adjustment, regardless of their ages. Time has to be split with the parents and that is Never Fun for the kid having to learn to adjust. But adjust she did, as have the other kids with each new addition. (Some additions did go more smoothly than others, and some took a lot longer to become smooth.)

So, that being said, we waited 9 months for our first match. We went to committee 4 times and were not matched. We were matched with the 5th child for whom we went to committee. We had sent inquiries in on around 40-50 kids. The majority of those inquiries went unanswered at all. The most common response was that the child was matched or they weren't interested in our homestudy.

The second adoption we had been looking for a few months and were matched with the first child for whom we went to committee. (I guess the thought we knew what we were doing by then....) We had probably inquired about 30 or so kids for this adoption.

The third child took longer and we were matched after about 8 or 9 months. We had withdrawn from 2 committees, not been matched at one, and had taken a hiatus due to a death in the family, so that whole process took over a year, maybe a year and a half, the last 9 months of which we were actively looking. We had inquired about a fair number of kids this time, too. 40 or so, probably. Very few responses at all. We were surprised to be selected to go before the committee for the child we were matched with, and then doubly surprised that we were matched. (But were very happy!)

Our last adoption was a relative so we sent out no inquiries, and the timelines just don't really apply to that situation.

ROFL Had to edit and say how many inquiries we sent out. Sorry!