[mig42]

We've just signed up with an agency in Jersey and have just received some preliminary paperwork to work away on.

Both myself and my husband are CA and we have a 16 month old biological daughter already. We
hope to adopt a newborn full AA or mixed race baby boy.

One of the questions on the autobiography guide though we're a bit confused by and was wondering
if anyone here can shed some light on it.

The questions are:
Child Preferred
What type of child would you prefer? What types of things would you find unacceptable(consider medical, genetic concerns, physical, psychological characteristics, family history etc? Special concerns, issues etc?)

Now, since we have already signed up for the AA or mixed minority pool I know this is the answer to the first question(What typt of child). However on the remaining questions we're slightly unsure what exactly they mean. Let me just say that we would like a healthy newborn, but could someone possibly give us more of an in debt guideline as to what they could mean by (1)medical, (2)genetic, (3)physical, (4)psychological characteristics that would be acceptable/unacceptable and also (5)family history?

Thanks.

[teranga]

Does your agency have a checklist to clarify? We adopted from Ethiopia, and had a similar question. We knew we were comfortable with correctable "issues", and some "minor" issues, but not "major" issues. The problem was, there are a million potential issues, and our definition of major/minor might not be someone else's, and how could we possibly cover what we would and would not be OK with in a few lines.....

They pulled up a checklist of sorts and that's what we filled out. It was kind of odd to be so...blunt, but it really helped. It had a TON of things on it--
"Would you consider a child deaf in both ears? In one ear? Minor hearing loss? Hearing loss which responds to hearing aid? Hearing loss which does not respond to hearing aid?"

We ended up checking a lot more things as acceptable than we thought we would...probably b/c we talked about specific situations and realized we could certainly accept a child who wasn't entirely "healthy" even though we were still not prepared to adopt a child with (what we consider) major issues.

If they don't ahve a checklist, I think what they are trying to get at is if there are things you know you are not willing to accept (for example, for family history, perhaps you are or are not willing to accept a child whose immediate family has a history of schitzophrenia (sp?). For genetic, a child who has a genetic heart defect, or carries sickle cell...etc). Sounds like they are trying to figure out whether you would consider a special needs child, and if so, whether a minor or major special needs (or potential special needs, based on family history).