It can take upwards of $40,000 to adopt a healthy Caucasian infant in the U.S. International adoptions are all but closed (unless you happen to be a celebrity). Yet there are so many fantastic children currently languishing in foster care here in our own backyard who want nothing more then to have a loving parent. Why is that? Why don’t more want-to-be parents choose foster care to help them start the family they so earnestly wish for? Do they think it costs a lot of money to adopt from the system? Do they think adoption is only for infants? Do they think they’ll be “less” of a family? Do they think these kids are juvenile delinquents or worse yet, “damaged goods”? The answer to all these questions is a resounding NO!
What can the National Adoption Center do to make adoption of children from the foster care system a more “attractive” option?? Is is a matter of "marketing" or of fixing some part of the system? Or is it not what parents-to-be want?
Monday, June 1, 2009
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My husband and I have been waiting for a year to adopt from the Maryland foster care system. We have been told that not many children under age 8 are coming into the system anymore. We have even begun searching in other states to no avail. Yet we always hear that there are so many children who need homes. Where is the break down? Somewhere along the way waiting parents are being over-looked of fed misinformation.
As waiting parents we are very frustrated. We receive no help to search, I do all the looking online and then ask our worker to send our home study, and when she does, she also sends all the other families in the agency too. I thought we should have been informed of this during training, but somehow that part was left out. We felt betrayed, we are spending hours looking online and they send other peoples info along with ours, I think that is very unfair. I am starting to see why people adopt internationally. Help, I'm losing faith in the system!
Chris & Bonnie
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