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Originally Posted By Robin

My husband and I are planning on adopting an older child (daughter between the age of 6-12). We had our homestudy done about four months ago, and are licensed now, etc. It seems that if we see a child on the internet sites and/or thru our agency, we don't get responses after contacting our agency. I realize that the agency has to deal with the state(s) & that possibly workers never get back to them. It does get upsetting, even though we try to have patience. At times I wonder if we'll ever find a daughter. I thought with the wide age group that we are looking at that there would be lots of children in foster care who need permanent homes. I'd like to hear from others in the same situation who are looking solely at a U.S. adoption. Maybe knowing that we're not the only ones out there who find this waiting game the hardest part would make me feel better.

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Originally Posted By Beverly

Hey robin I been waiting about the same length of time so I know just how you feel. have you looked though the Indianas adoptable kids magazine you would have to order it.If you get any leads let me know email me at carl927h

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Originally Posted By Sue

Be patient! And do as much of the leg work as possible I ran into the same thing when I was looking for my daughter. She was 7 years old when I was matched with her. Try to make the call yourself if possible and network as much as possible getting on mailing lists and your homestudy set to as many agencies as possible. Good Luck

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Originally Posted By Sandy

My husband and I are also looking to adopt an older child. We have been licensed for over a year and we are experiencing the same problems. I can't begin to tell you how many inquiries we have submitted with no response. I don't know what is harder, the waiting or never hearing back from anyone. What is even more frustrating for us is that you hear that there is a great need to adopt older children in foster care.

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Originally Posted By Carolyn

When we started our classes for adoption/foster to adopt with children's services last year we were told that girls between 4-10 are the most requested are adopted quickly. The instructors agreed that boys were harder to place and teens were hard. Under four was nearly nonexistant for adoption for some reason.Unfortunatly we were unable to complete our classes due to change in my husbands job last year. I do wish you luck in your journey.

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Originally Posted By Sue Mattiello

congratulations on your decision to adopt an older child. My husband and I adopted our 13 year old son last year and it has been the most rewarding experience of our lives. Don't give up! Your child is out there, be open to recognizing her/him when they come along. I can tell you that our son was not the ideal child that we thought we were looking for. Reading his social summary and speaking to his social worker left me with a very uneasy feeling but I knew that this our child. Once we met him we knew he was our child. I can tell you that one year later, we are all convinced that he was meant to be with us, he even looks like us. Having to deal with the social workers and state workers is often hard, just stay in front of them. Be persistant and don't give up hope. It will pay off in the end.

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Originally Posted By V

Your not alone. We are in the same boat. Our homestudy was completed back in March. We have found tons of children that we are interested in, and it seems as though our agency is dragging their feet to help us get a child in our home. Sometimes to us it seems as though their goal is to drag it out for some reason. We are willing to accept a sibling group boy or girl and it is still taking so long. We originally started our adoption process in October of 2001 and the home study completed March 2002. We are just sitting and waiting. We try to stay strong and be encouraged. We trust God and feel that he has our "special" child out there waiting for us. May God bless you!

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Originally Posted By Angel

Yes it does get old, the waiting. I was told right from the start to have patience. You learn it or it kills ya. Im still not good at it. ) Good news is we did get placed and we are about to finalize.
Bad news is once you get placed you STILL have to wait for things! I would check with your SW often, look at photolistings, send the names and numbers of the kids to your worker, talk to the kids workers that you can.
Hang in there! Angel in OR

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Originally Posted By Rena L. Holm

You are not alone. We've been at it for since March. Our range is from 0-7 or so and we would like to have a sibling group up to 4 children. It is frustrating, but hang in there, I know the right child/children will come at the right time. Don't give up, there is a special little girl somewhere waiting for you and your husband. (that's what I keep telling ourself.)
I would like to keep in touch. Let me know about your progress.

God Bless
Rená

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Originally Posted By abmom

We found that we had to do a lot of the contact work ourselves. Our local sw would call once, but not follow up as needed. At least if I did things myself, I knew it had been don.

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Originally Posted By Danielle

I am an adoption assessor and my thought is that the matching is one of the most crtical pieces in the adoption process. Simply seeing a little girl who may look like what you want is not a good way to match. She needs to really have the issues you can handle and not present with ones you can not handle. I would suggest calling the agency that holds the custody of the child over and over and over again until they return your call or you catch them at your desk. Same with your agency. Put your requesting in writing as well. Be diligent and proactive. Being patient does not mean sitting and doing nothing, call social workers, their supervisor if need be, and if your agency is still not cooperative, consider using a private agency for the matching. You may get much better pre and post placement support anyway.
To help ease your anxiety read every single adoption book you can get your hands on. Adopting the Hurt child and Parenting the Hurt child by Greg Keck is a must!!!! Love and Logic is another. Join support groups where you can talk with others who have adopted hurt children to begin to prepare you for after the Honeymoon. Also, create a family Life Book that shows quality, up close recent and friendly photos of yourself and husband. Just like a scrapbook that is so popular now in craft stores, write who you are, your occupations, hobbies, info about dogs, community, school the child may attend, every room in your house, the child's room, etc. Include lots of quality photos of those items and put them in an album. Then when you are matched with a child, this will be your first gift to her. She needs a tangible piece of evidence of who you are and what her new family is like before she even meets you. Ask her what she likes to do, if she needs a bike, what grade she is in, what soret of hobbies she likes (Barbies or Trucks, Dresses or Jeans), what foods she likes best and least and how to prepare them (white or wheat, Pepsi or Coke, Grape or Strawberry, Crunchy or smooth, Pizza Hut or Dominoes, Sugar Smacks or Cheerios Etc) Make this as a little list with stickers that she and her foster mother can complete. This says to her that you really do care and respect her and want to help her as much as possible.
make copies of your life book for you to keep just in case and if you get siblings each one should receive a copy.
Be persistent, diligent, and think of it as already advocating for your daughters needs. Social workers may have 20 to 60 children on thier case load and calling you back just can not be a priority that particular day. Then they plan on calling you but a child on their load shows up at school bruises, or runs away from the cottage, or a mother drops off her unruly 6 year old and says she can't handle him and walks away, or a foster mother does the same, or 5 siblings are court ordered to have a visit every week and none of the foster parents will transport so she must transport all five there anc back, or she has a trial get rescheduled earlier and needs to write her summary and prepare evidence, etc etc etc. Call CAll call. Be very polite, sweet, complimentary even to her, despite how you may really want to talk. People who speak kindly and with sweetness always get their phone calls returned quicker from me than those with attitudes, frustration, or snippiness.
Good luck and be procative.

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Originally Posted By D.Putnam

For some reason I feel the workers in some areas do not try as hard with the older children as they do the younger ones. Maybe due to the fact that everyone seems to want a young chilkd. My husband and I are in our 50's and we wanted an older girl. My state workers matched us March 2001 with a 15 year old and we adopted her December 2001. She is a PERFECT match for us. If you're interested , e-mail me and I'll tell you how I found her. My e-mail address is pywacket@tecinfo.com. Donna Putnam in Mississippi

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Originally Posted By D.Putnam

For some reason I feel the workers in some areas do not try as hard with the older children as they do the younger ones. Maybe due to the fact that everyone seems to want a young chilkd. My husband and I are in our 50's and we wanted an older girl. My state workers matched us March 2001 with a 15 year old and we adopted her December 2001. She is a PERFECT match for us. If you're interested , e-mail me and I'll tell you how I found her. My e-mail address is pywacket@tecinfo.com. Donna Putnam in Mississippi

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Originally Posted By Cheri

To quote our departed infamous president "I feel your pain". We have adopted 4 children abroad and were amazed that the process was much easier than adopting a hard-to-place, minority, older sibling group in the U.S. The one thing I would suggest is that you go to the faces of adoption site and register. Once you register you can find the name and phone number of the child's actual caseworker and try to deal directly with them. I've found that waiting for your caseworker to contact someone for you is a futile prospect. When you contact the child's caseworker on your own at least you know they got contacted. I'm not saying that that makes it a lot faster - you can't believe how many caseworkers won't return calls or will tell you that one of the children has been placed, or that they're not really available for adoption.

We finally adopted a sibling set of 3 from the State of Missouri and found them to be very easy to work with. They have caseworkers whose sole job is to find adoptive parents, so they're not trying to juggle a caseload of kids and get them adopted at the same time. You might go on-line and see if there are any girls you are interested in in Missouri.

In any case, an adoptive parent must be very proactive while, at the same time, not being pushy - it's a fine line. It remains amazing to me that all you read is how states are begging for people to adopt children and then make the process almost impossible.

Good luck, keep praying, God will find the child that is perfect for your home. If you want to e-mail me, you can reach me at ctillman@am1st.com

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Originally Posted By Regina Scheppmann

I can completely understand the waiting without response. My husband and I have just begun the process a few months ago but it seems as though everytime we see a lillte girl in out state that we're interested in or want to know more about she has already found a family. I always tell myself that she wasn't meant to be ours and that there is a little girl out there for us. We have 2 boys and I see the father-son bonding thing happening and I want so much to have a mother daughter relationship like the one I have with both my mom amd mother-in-law. The waiting sems endless but I believe everything happens for a reason. The right child is out there for you and for us too. I laugh because my boys say that we can't just look at one girl we have to look at sisters so that we can have boys against the girls when do family games or go to the park to play some basketball or baseball. It's amazing how children think. If you ever want someone who understand the wait to just talk to please email sunnystarmoon@yahoo.com