Adoption Agencies Working For You
FINDING THE RIGHT AGENCY
WRITE OR PHONE AS MANY AGENCIES AS YOU CAN LOCATE through your state social service department, the yellow pages, other adoptive parents, and the resources mentioned later in this article. Some agencies may be two or three hours away but may still serve your area.
WHEN YOU FIRST INQUIRE, don’t be surprised if the intake worker or receptionist suggests sending you introductory literature to answer your initial questions. Often agencies are unable to spend much time on your first phone call, since they receive many inquiries that are not followed through, and since most have age or marriage requirements for adoptive parents that disqualify some potential applicants. Restrictions and policies will be explained fully in each agency’s introductory written material or at its orientation meeting for prospective applicants.
TRY TO ATTEND ORIENTATION MEETINGS at more than one agency before making your choice. Don’t rule out an agency simply because you feel that you got a brusque reception on your first call; the adoption worker who eventually will be assigned to you will give you a great deal of his or her time and answer your many questions at length.
TALK TO AS MANY ADOPTIVE PARENTS AS YOU CAN before selecting an agency. The negative experience of one couple may be counteracted by the positive experience of others who went through the same agency. No agency is perfect, and some social workers may seem more sensitive and efficient than others. We like to think we are all concerned and caring, but the power we have over others can sometimes make us seem threatening. (Much as I liked my own adoption worker, I was never completely at ease with her.)
DON’T BE DISCOURAGED if the first agencies you contact have restrictions that rule out your family because of age, length of marriage, prior divorces, marital status, or some other seemingly arbitrary requirement. Often these restrictions are imposed by the particular foreign governments or orphanages with which your local agency is working. Keep trying! Another agency in your area may be dealing with other sources, within the same country or in another country, with fewer restrictions–or none–on age and marital status.
CHOOSING A SOURCE
A source is an agency, orphanage, or attorney–often in another state or country–that has children available for adoption. For some adoptions, choosing a source is separate from finding a local home study agency.
Some local agencies offer only American infants, often with a wait of five or more years, but others deal with one or more foreign or domestic sources that have an estimated waiting period of only six to eighteen months from time of application. Most local home study agencies have very few American babies released to them. Many work primarily with foreign sources that place Asian or Latin-American children from infancy up, or out-of-state or in-state sources that place school-age or handicapped (”special needs”) American children.
If your home study agencies have no foreign or out-of-state sources of their own, you can agree to take full responsibility for locating your child through a more distant agency if the local agency will provide you with the home study required by law. Even if your local agency generally confines itself to a few placements of American babies a year and has a long waiting list for those infants, it may be happy to provide you with a priority home study if your research has uncovered a specific source able to place a foreign-born infant or American special-needs child with you.
Local home study agencies inexperienced in foreign or interstate adoption may be reluctant to take on this responsibility; for fear they will be blamed if something goes wrong. But if there is no other option for you than to go through such an agency for your home study, you can contact the adoption supervisor, explain that you know of children who are available through another source, and offer to sign an agreement that would exempt the agency from liability if you have problems obtaining a child through your chosen source. Even very traditional agencies are generally made up of compassionate individuals who are eager to help place children from anywhere in the world–if they don’t have to worry about their liability.
While making inquiries, you may be told by someone that “there are very few children available for adoption right now.” This is certainly not the case, and anyone who tells you this is simply not aware of the thousands of children available world-wide, and how to go about finding them. So don’t be discouraged by what others may tell you; just keep making inquiries.
There is an agency somewhere that will welcome your application, even if you are over 50, previously divorced, married only a year or two, single, an atheist, handicapped, on a tight budget, the parents of six children, and/or living in an isolated rural area!
The agencies that work with overseas sources, or that have special-needs children to place, are generally not nearly as restrictive as those who have a small number of white American infants. These more flexible agencies try their best to dispense with arbitrary requirements in order to find loving. committed parents for all their children. In reality, most agencies would like to be more flexible, but even those who work overseas may be limited by the requirements of the particular governments or sources with which they work.
UNDERSTANDING THE HOMESTUDY
The home study process can be intimidating, since there is always the possibility of being turned down. But it’s remote one; agencies are much more interested in bringing families together than in keeping them apart. Naturally, they will ask many routine questions and do police checks to protect children against the one couple among dozens that might abuse a child or provide a less-that-adequate home. But unless you have a criminal record, unstable marriage, life-threatening medical condition, history of mental illness, or current chemical dependency, you are very likely to be approved if you meet the up-front eligibility requirements.
Agencies prefer to do most of their applicant screening at the very beginning, before clients have spent much time or money; the home study can then focus on preparation for adoptive parenthood–something much more enjoyable, for both the social worker and the applicants! Adoption workers are ordinarily very nice people anxious to be perceived as non-threatening and helpful. I wish we could change the term “home study” to something that would clarify that this required series of interviews focuses on preparing families for a new experience and on helping them evaluate their own readiness for adoption.
Although each home study agency is different, you can expect the application forms and interviews to cover something about your family of origin, your thoughts on child-rearing and discipline, your marriage and other relationships, your home and finances, your feelings about infertility and adoption, and the type of child you feel is best suited to your family. Local agencies need this information not only to insure–and help you insure–that adoption is right for you at this time, but also to prove this to the source. Responsible child-placing agencies or orphanages in any country will look for a favorable detailed home study report so that they can feel confident that their children are going to good homes. Once your home study is approved, you can generally count on a report that will present you in a very favorable light.
When people are eager to become parents, it is hard to wait for a home study to begin and, later on, for the adoption to be processed. These waiting periods are to in part to staff limitations, the number of parents who apply, and the sheer amount of paper work that agencies must handle.
In some cases the checklist in the couple’s file lists 20 or more documents that the homestudy agency must prepare for its state authorities and the foreign source or obtain from doctors, references, parents, and the placement agency. For every hour spent face-to-face with the applicants, there may be 10 or more hours of paper work and telephone time for the social worker and administrative staff.
A large part of the adoptive parent’s service fee goes to help pay the cost of operating the agency, since many adoption agencies have no endowment of United Way funding. This helps explain why agency fees sometimes seem very high to adoptive parents in relation to the number of hours that they actually spend in contact with the social worker.
COPING WITH DELAYS AND TENSION
After the home study is completed, parents may face a wait of many months before a child is found for them, particularly if they are requesting an infant. Sources have no way of knowing the ages and characteristics of the children who will be released for adoption in the near future. They try to build an adequate pool of parents open to various kinds of children, so that parents will wait a moderate length of time, in preference to children waiting for families.
This system does not always work smoothly, and parents may have a wait that is much longer than was originally estimated. This is especially true when a foreign government changes its regulations, or there are unexpected delays in the courts, or a large number of adoptive parents apply at the same time. The source may have the same problems with formidable paper work and time-consuming government regulations that the stateside agency has. Dedicated orphanage workers may have to postpone their paper work at times to care for their children and to meet their basic needs.
It is hard to be patient with delays, especially when you have learned of a specific child and have his or her picture. But delays are generally beyond anyone’s control. Keep in mind that agency workers, as well as adoptive parents, experience feelings of powerlessness and anxiety at such times; this can ease the tensions that may develop over delays.
Adoption workers would like you to see them as friends and partners in furthering your shared goal of a loving home for every child. There are usually good reasons for whatever agency policy or procedure may be making you feel frustrated, angry, or subjected to unfair scrutiny. Agencies will generally explain their reasons if you ask, and it will make you feel better to clear the air if there is a problem or misunderstanding.
Your worker may not fully understand your tensions and vulnerabilities. When you can bring yourself to be open about your feelings, despite the power your agency has in your life, the result is often a fruitful dialogue that can lead to constructive change in the worker-client relationship.
By Deborah McCurdy
Reprinted with permission from REPORT ON INTERCOUNTRY ADOPTION,1995.
The entire report may be ordered from International
Concerns Committee for Children, 911 Cypress Drive,
Boulder, Co., 80303. Cost of the report is $20.00.
