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Originally Posted By Terri

I have a question for the group. We should be finalizing our adoption of Anthony in October. Today, I saw a boy in CA that we interested in, so I sent an inquiry to his CW. She responded to me in about 1 hour! That was very surprising. She told me that she is very interested in our family for him and have our CW send our homestudy to her. I mainly want to know if CA will pay for our travel to visit him if we are chosen, or if they will bring him to us? We live in PA and it would definitly cost to travel to CA. Any thoughts would be appreciated.

Terri

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Originally Posted By Pam

We have a large family and life paycheck-to-paycheck, so travel expenses were out for us too. CA found a really neat little boy for us to adopt, but we would have had to travel there at our own expense and, when he visited us, again we'd have to pay. I think they only pay up to $750 in all in adoption expenses,w hich is peanuts for us. We had to turn the child down and, since then, have skipped looking at states with very low adoption expenses such as CA, TX, UT, CO, and a few more. There are more states that WILL pay expenses than won't. Seems a big, rich state like CA would want to get their kids adopted and pay the expenses, but they don't. Bummer...for us AND the kids.

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but our California adoption experience has been wonderful so far. We are working specifically with Sacramento county - can't say anything even remotely bad about the way they have treated us or how the process has been. We're certainly not swimming in extra money to pay for expenses - we used frequent flyer miles for our trip out there, and couponed/discounted all we could, just like any other trip. I ended up going through California based on the response I got from a private non-profit agency out there (Chrysalis House) and subsequent great responses from various county workers. Our caseworker in Sac county is already willing to start looking for our next sib group for us and finding us exactly what we want - which we will have to be very specific on age (0 - 6) to fit with our other two. Depends what your priorities are!

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Originally Posted By Pam

Well, California may place wonderful kids, but some of us can't come up with extra money, no matter what, and California is quite a hike from Wisconsin...plus it isn't cheap to go there....hotel expenses, etc. add up. The states we worked with and loved were New Jersey and Delaware. They not only were eager and happy to place kids with us....both states THANKED us for doing so. In the case of New Jersey, they flew our son out to visit us (didn't make us go there...again, because we have a lot of kids and traveling or finding babysitters for overnight is hard for us) four times. They never charged us a dime for his transportation. Delaware had two visits for us...one here and one in Delaware...all paid for by Delaware...including my hotel costs. I got to visit everyone at the delaware office, my son's foster mom, my son's therapist and my son's teacher. They tried to let me talk to everyone in person. When they finalize, it will be in Delaware, and we don't even have to show up. Both states paid for our homestudy too, because we were with private agencies. And they paid our legal fees. The combined cost was $0. Therefore, people who don't make a lot of money and have large families can adopt hard-to-place kids from those states. And our sons were very hard to place...one was listed for almost two years. Other states that we talked to and thought were friendly and receptive were Maine, NC and IL. I don't know their reimbursement policies. In our early years of adoption, we spent a lot of money on adoption, including international adoption, but we are at the point where we just can't anyone. Yet we can afford a child once the child is actually here. I feel like states that don't deprive a child of a home because of their prospective families travel expenses (which is a large lump sum) must not care about placing their kids as much as states that do a better job in that area. I know how many kids wait in TX and CA....it makes no sense to me why they'd choose to support the kids in the system rather than make it easier for not-so-rich people to adopt their kids, like NJ and Delaware do. We are the folks that are eager to adopt the hardest kids to place....older minority (especially black) males. I don't like the subtle message that our priorities are on other things in front of adopting children....we rent a house right now, own two vehicles over ten years old (hub is a car mechanic, which is handy) and buy our clothes at Goodwill. Our kids are the only people with toys, in our family. Some people don't have a lot of extra money, but have good hearts and the means to support a child once they are here. It's those transportation/hotel costs that are killers.....myself and others can't always come up with the up front money, no matter how much we'd like to. And there are waiting children who need homes in every single state. My two cents Have a nice day!

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Originally Posted By Mike

In my experience, I found some states to be wonderful and some state seemed to be managed by the Three Stooges. My son came from Ohio, which can be maddening. One thing about Ohio is that every county follows their own procedure. At the time I was matched, I was working with three different counties in Ohio. One that did NOT impress me was Cuyahoga County (Cleveland). From my expereince, this office is chaos defined. Workers are never in, they send outdated information, and left me less than impressed.

Two states that DID impress me in my quest were Maine and Oregon. Both had workers that were VERY accessible, both were very forthcoming about information, and were good experiences for me. Had I not been matched with Jimmy, I would have gone with a young man in Maine who they REALLY wanted me to take.

On the other hand, my home state of Indiana makes Kathy Lee's sweatshops look like a kids paradise. Indiana not only doesn't like to place children out of state, I get the impression that they don't like to place children AT ALL. At first I thought it was just because I was a single guy, but I've since met several two-parent families who also get ignored by Indiana.

Just my two cents. Hope it helps.

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Originally Posted By Pam

If it is appropriate (and I know it may not be), could you please e-mail me the name of the child who maine really wanted you to take? You know what a sap I am for kids who are hard to place, especially older boys. Thanks, whether you can or can not

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Originally Posted By Deana

We were matched with kids in CAl. last summer and were thrilled. The state does not pay for travel. They will reimburse some of the expense when you finalize the adoption. We were working with Los Angeles county. They will do the finalization there at no expense to you. The thing that happened with us was that we went for our visits and it turned out the worker thought a 4 and 5 year old can't understand adoption so he had told them nothing about us and on the second visit the foster mom decided to sabotage the placement(she wants to keep them in long term foster care) and since they hadn't been prepared to move to us she was successful in upsetting them so the worker said that if they don't want to go we can't make them so we were not allowed to adopt them. Our agency tried to get some of our travel expenses reimbursed but California said that since we didn't adopt the kids they won't reimburse. We would still take these kids to this day if we had been allowed to. So our experience with them turned out really bad and we almost quit looking.
We got our girls on Aug. 25th and Alabama brings the kids to you for visits and for placement. We only had one 5 day visit before they were placed. You have no travel expenses but their subsidy is low, currently $254 a month. I would recommend them as far as low expenses and such but was disappointed that I had no contact with their foster parents and most files were provided up front but they didn't give us their counseling notes until after we signed the placement papers and there was some new info in there.

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California has paid all the kids' travel expenses for a visit here and their subsequent placement trip. So far all we are out is minimal travel expenses ($300??? which we will get reimbursed upon finalization) and our fee to the agency we used, which I get reimbursed through work.

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Originally Posted By Terri

This child is in San Bernadino. If you don't mind me asking, where are you children from?

Thanks
Terri

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which has a reputation as a really good county to work with - upfront, straight forward caseworkers - I always get my calls and emails answered the same day as the original call/email.

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What you said is beautiful. We are in that catagory of not having the money up front but being able to care for a child once they are in our home. There is alot of love here and that is what we want to share the most. We are trying to put a little away for unexpected costs, but we are hoping for reimbursement for most of it. We are interested in a boy in NC and just need to get through these education classes so that we can move forward. It's nice to know that NC is one of the easier states to work with.
Blessings,
Jackie

ps- how is the packing going? )

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Originally Posted By akat

Sorry so long after your post for this question but I dont get on here much. We also are looking at a boy from NC. Do you mind me asking a little about the boy your looking at? The child we are looking at is around 8 months old with pretty severe delays. I would like to keep in touch and compare experiences. Thanks Akat