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The Public Adoption Process and the Adoptive Families
Adopting a child from the public welfare system can be a challenging, yet exciting experience. The public adoption process can be cumbersome at times, with little understanding of how the system operates. This is often frustrating to a family that is trying to adopt. Potential adoptive families simply want to provide a loving, stable home but then find they have to wait through a long, cumbersome adoption process. It is essential that families don’t get discouraged and leave the process all together. Support, patience and understanding of the public adoption process may be helpful.
Adoption in Ohio as in most states, use the public matching process. A social worker is assigned to a child, and works with that child while in foster care, preparing him or her for a permanent family. At the same time, the social worker is recruiting and searching for a permanent adoptive family for this child. This recruitment first takes place with any possible biological relatives, then generally moves to a local search, and then finally a national search of possible “stranger” adoptive families. Often social workers will read many homestudies to consider for the same child. The social worker will narrow down this group of potential families to the top three to five families that the worker feels may best meet the child’s needs. There then is some type of committee or “staffing” held to help determine the best possible match for the child. There are times that the acting social worker will interview each family, and/or the program that wrote the family homestudy. Sometimes families are asked to make photo albums to show their family, and even videos of themselves to show the committee a little about themselves. This video and album may be the child’s first introduction to the family after they have been identified as the selected family for the child. There are many varieties to this adoption process, but they generally follow a similar course. After a family is identified, they are presented with as much information as the program has on the child, (sometimes this information is presented before the staffing). Often the family is able to talk with foster parents, teachers, and even therapists to help make a decision as to whether they feel they would be able to meet the needs of this child. Once a decision is made by the family and the program to move forward, a visitation process is established. The child and the family visit, and spend overnights together until everyone involved is ready for the child to move in to the adoptive home permanently.
Once the child moves in with the family, the true transition begins to take place. Families find it helpful to work with the child’s previous therapist (if they were in counseling prior to the move) while beginning the process with a new counselor closer to their home. The social worker will continue to work with the family and the child to help with any needs that may arise during this time. States vary, but the adoptive families can formalize adoption in Ohio, after six months. This is an exciting time, which signifies to the child the end of a social worker making decisions for them while becoming a permanent member of their “forever family”.
When a younger child is being placed for adoption, the social worker can identify a home relatively quickly. It is not unusual for a social workers to have more than 50 to 100 homestudies to read for children under eight years old. With older children, social workers may have to look through many program’s and resources to find homestudies of adoptive families that may be able and willing to parent such a child. The greatest need is for families open to adopting minority children or those children over the age of 8 or sibling groups.
The process of adopting a child out of foster care can be a “roller coaster ride” with different guidelines to follow depending on the agency with whom you are working. There are thousands of children waiting for a loving, permanent family and a better understanding of the public adoption process and the types of children that are waiting will make the trip until your family is home much smoother.
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