Seeking Adoption Agency Recs

[Anonymous]

Does anyone have a good adoption agency? We were originally looking at an older child adoption from foster care. I am shocked after researching how expensive it is. One website says 11,100 and each sibling is another 6,000. Adopting a healthy newborn isn't all that much more! Are there other agencies that don't cost as much? I know going through the county can be free, but then you often don't get to adopt only foster. How can foster care be so costly when we have so many children in foster care.

Can anyone point me in the direction of a good agency?

[Anonymous]

So we used adoptions together. They have offices in VA and MD. WE are in MD and happy with the process. We are a white gay couple and adopted our healthy AA daughter when she was 30 days old, she is now almost 8.

having said that, I am not sure where you are getting your info from. If you adopt from foster care in DC, MD and VA it is free, they actually give you a stipend to encourage adoption. It is lengthy and not easy but I am not sure where you are getting the info that you pay.

[Anonymous]

Adopting from foster care is free. Go directly to the state agency in your county. You don't go to a private agency for that. Usually kids who end up at the private agencies are because they are hard to place and the public agency could not. They recruit families all over and not just the ones with them. Adopting a newborn can be $20K-80K depending on the agency/attorney/private and your luck.

Not all kids come with stipends from foster care. Most do but there is specific criteria and not all kids fit. It has to do with age, race and needs.

[Anonymous]

The Barker Adoption Foundation

https://www.barkeradoptionfoundation.org

[Anonymous]

My friends (lesbian married couple) adopted their 3 kids from foster care and it did not cost a cent. They would never have been able to afford agency/private adoption. All the kids (babies under 1) were healthy so they did not qualify for extra stipend but they were not looking to qualify. None are bio siblings but they are so close in age (now 6,4,3) they are deeply bonded.

[Anonymous]

Using Barker or Adoptions Together for an adoption from foster care does cost a lot because they do your training, homestudy, and help you with out of state matches. You get a tax credit back if you adopt but you need the money up front. I used one of them and I think nobody in our class successfully adopted. Of the eight, two disrupted placements, one switched to international adoption, one I don't know, and the others decided not to pursue it before doing the homestudy and paying extra money.

It is free through the state or county but you are generally restricted to kids where you live (they aren't going to share your homestudy that they paid for with another state--they want you to take their kids). DC and MD make relatively few kids available for adoption, and especially few kids are legally freed without a relative or foster home willing to adopt them.

If you are going to adopt an older waiting child for foster care, you 100% need to assume that the child will have PTSD, family history of addiction and serious mental illness, learning disabilities requiring an IEP, and major behavioral problems that will at some point require a stay at home parent/private school/inpatient hospitalization/residential mental health treatment. Few kids will have all of these. Most kids will have some of these. You may not know right away and you're often not going to find out from the paperwork you're shown. For a social worker to be considering out of state placement, it means the kid was treated badly enough to be removed, parents did little enough to have their rights terminated, no foster home they were in was willing to adopt them, no relatives were stable enough or willing to adopt them, and the state couldn't find someone from its already-licensed group of foster and adoptive families. It's not something to go into lightly (not that OP was!). I want more people to do it but they need to be really well-screened and well-trained and well-supported. Most people, even if they're good parents in general, are not going to be good at parenting a severely traumatized and often mentally ill tween or teen.

Same thing with fostering. Most people, even if they want to adopt, are not going to be naturally good at taking care of a kid who isn't theirs and probably isn't going to stay with them, helping the kid stay connected to bio family, and living with the uncertainty of the court case plus not knowing what the kid was exposed to before placement and how that will manifest as the kid gets older.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Using Barker or Adoptions Together for an adoption from foster care does cost a lot because they do your training, homestudy, and help you with out of state matches. You get a tax credit back if you adopt but you need the money up front. I used one of them and I think nobody in our class successfully adopted. Of the eight, two disrupted placements, one switched to international adoption, one I don't know, and the others decided not to pursue it before doing the homestudy and paying extra money.

It is free through the state or county but you are generally restricted to kids where you live (they aren't going to share your homestudy that they paid for with another state--they want you to take their kids). DC and MD make relatively few kids available for adoption, and especially few kids are legally freed without a relative or foster home willing to adopt them.

If you are going to adopt an older waiting child for foster care, you 100% need to assume that the child will have PTSD, family history of addiction and serious mental illness, learning disabilities requiring an IEP, and major behavioral problems that will at some point require a stay at home parent/private school/inpatient hospitalization/residential mental health treatment. Few kids will have all of these. Most kids will have some of these. You may not know right away and you're often not going to find out from the paperwork you're shown. For a social worker to be considering out of state placement, it means the kid was treated badly enough to be removed, parents did little enough to have their rights terminated, no foster home they were in was willing to adopt them, no relatives were stable enough or willing to adopt them, and the state couldn't find someone from its already-licensed group of foster and adoptive families. It's not something to go into lightly (not that OP was!). I want more people to do it but they need to be really well-screened and well-trained and well-supported. Most people, even if they're good parents in general, are not going to be good at parenting a severely traumatized and often mentally ill tween or teen.

Same thing with fostering. Most people, even if they want to adopt, are not going to be naturally good at taking care of a kid who isn't theirs and probably isn't going to stay with them, helping the kid stay connected to bio family, and living with the uncertainty of the court case plus not knowing what the kid was exposed to before placement and how that will manifest as the kid gets older.

OP here. We adopted our first child when we lived in another state. We used a private adoption agency. We adopted from foster care, but adopted a child who lived in state, but a different county about 5 hrs away. We paid absolutely nothing. I'm just shocked at the price tag on this. Most kids in the system have siblings. It's no wonder there are so many kids in the system waiting for adoption when you have states that make it so cost prohibitive.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:So we used adoptions together. They have offices in VA and MD. WE are in MD and happy with the process. We are a white gay couple and adopted our healthy AA daughter when she was 30 days old, she is now almost 8.

having said that, I am not sure where you are getting your info from. If you adopt from foster care in DC, MD and VA it is free, they actually give you a stipend to encourage adoption. It is lengthy and not easy but I am not sure where you are getting the info that you pay.

Where I am getting my info from. Please tell me if I am wrong.

Adoptions together at LEAST $11,100
https://www.adoptionstogether.org/adopting/adopt-from-foster-care/the-cost-of-adopting-from-foster-care/

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My friends (lesbian married couple) adopted their 3 kids from foster care and it did not cost a cent. They would never have been able to afford agency/private adoption. All the kids (babies under 1) were healthy so they did not qualify for extra stipend but they were not looking to qualify. None are bio siblings but they are so close in age (now 6,4,3) they are deeply bonded.

Were they in the DMV? What agency?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Using Barker or Adoptions Together for an adoption from foster care does cost a lot because they do your training, homestudy, and help you with out of state matches. You get a tax credit back if you adopt but you need the money up front. I used one of them and I think nobody in our class successfully adopted. Of the eight, two disrupted placements, one switched to international adoption, one I don't know, and the others decided not to pursue it before doing the homestudy and paying extra money.

It is free through the state or county but you are generally restricted to kids where you live (they aren't going to share your homestudy that they paid for with another state--they want you to take their kids). DC and MD make relatively few kids available for adoption, and especially few kids are legally freed without a relative or foster home willing to adopt them.

If you are going to adopt an older waiting child for foster care, you 100% need to assume that the child will have PTSD, family history of addiction and serious mental illness, learning disabilities requiring an IEP, and major behavioral problems that will at some point require a stay at home parent/private school/inpatient hospitalization/residential mental health treatment. Few kids will have all of these. Most kids will have some of these. You may not know right away and you're often not going to find out from the paperwork you're shown. For a social worker to be considering out of state placement, it means the kid was treated badly enough to be removed, parents did little enough to have their rights terminated, no foster home they were in was willing to adopt them, no relatives were stable enough or willing to adopt them, and the state couldn't find someone from its already-licensed group of foster and adoptive families. It's not something to go into lightly (not that OP was!). I want more people to do it but they need to be really well-screened and well-trained and well-supported. Most people, even if they're good parents in general, are not going to be good at parenting a severely traumatized and often mentally ill tween or teen.

Same thing with fostering. Most people, even if they want to adopt, are not going to be naturally good at taking care of a kid who isn't theirs and probably isn't going to stay with them, helping the kid stay connected to bio family, and living with the uncertainty of the court case plus not knowing what the kid was exposed to before placement and how that will manifest as the kid gets older.

OP here. We adopted our first child when we lived in another state. We used a private adoption agency. We adopted from foster care, but adopted a child who lived in state, but a different county about 5 hrs away. We paid absolutely nothing. I'm just shocked at the price tag on this. Most kids in the system have siblings. It's no wonder there are so many kids in the system waiting for adoption when you have states that make it so cost prohibitive.

OP, every state does it differently but here you go through the county agency or DC directly. It should not cost anything. Yes, most kids have siblings and they do like to place siblings together, which is appropriate. If you foster-adopt you will get younger kids but its an at risk placement. If you adopt a child who is just place for adoption there are probably far more needs as they kids with less needs are adopted by foster parents or placed easily into homes.

This poster summed it up well. Most private agency social workers are not equipped to support families and aren't trained for kids with such high needs.

We had a very bad experience with Barker. Maybe its changed but their domestic program has lots of issues but their international program is much stronger.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So we used adoptions together. They have offices in VA and MD. WE are in MD and happy with the process. We are a white gay couple and adopted our healthy AA daughter when she was 30 days old, she is now almost 8.

having said that, I am not sure where you are getting your info from. If you adopt from foster care in DC, MD and VA it is free, they actually give you a stipend to encourage adoption. It is lengthy and not easy but I am not sure where you are getting the info that you pay.

Where I am getting my info from. Please tell me if I am wrong.

Adoptions together at LEAST $11,100
https://www.adoptionstogether.org/adopting/adopt-from-foster-care/the-cost-of-adopting-from-foster-care/

There is absolutely no reason to go through a private agency nor is it a great idea. In MD, agencies place directly with their foster and adopt families. The only time other agencies are used is when they cannot place within their own families. It should be free. Thats a money grab. The county will do the home study, training and provide social worker/agency support and do the adoption for you for free.

[Anonymous]

OP, read this summary. These are the kids Adoptions Together is placing but you can go through your county or Baltimore County directly for free. https://www.adoptionstogether.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/FFSD_Sheet_for_Partners.pdf

[Anonymous]

The only time you need a private agency is if you want to adopt from out of state. You could adopt a waiting child from your state for free. You could foster in state for free and adopt if the child needs that. Or you could move to a state with more waiting children and adopt one or more of them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The only time you need a private agency is if you want to adopt from out of state. You could adopt a waiting child from your state for free. You could foster in state for free and adopt if the child needs that. Or you could move to a state with more waiting children and adopt one or more of them.

Some county agencies will release the home study to another state if a child is legally free.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The only time you need a private agency is if you want to adopt from out of state. You could adopt a waiting child from your state for free. You could foster in state for free and adopt if the child needs that. Or you could move to a state with more waiting children and adopt one or more of them.

Some county agencies will release the home study to another state if a child is legally free.

True. I know DC CFSA won't. They want you to foster and/or adopt kids in DC.