approve
 
 

I understand how you feel. This is one of the reasons we visited the orphanage in Haiti for a weekend prior to accepting a match. I felt that if we were going to adopt an older child, we needed to make sure it was going to be a fit - especially since we already had children. We didn't make this known to the children - we were just visitors. But it helped clarify that Kembe was the right child for us.

 

Adopting from the foster care system is free!

Sure!

Exactly, Ciaran.

So true about volunteering~

Carrie, trust me, I know these laws so well, so if we disagree it's likely from misundestanding, but not because I need to educate myself. I completely agree that birth parents should be given a chance for reunification, and was not referring to that waiting period at all. I'm referring to the fact that parental rights are not terminated even after the birthparent has been given time and resources to complete reunification and failed. It's my opinoin that at this point, if the birthparent's reunification services are done, that TPR should occur, so that children are legally free to be adopted. In the state of California, kids are put into a limbo state where they have no contact with their birthparent, whose case plan has been terminated, and yet are not free for adoption. This makes it even more difficult to recruit parents to adopt them. I am only talking about what happens AFTER a birthparent has been given a chance. Many will reunify, and that is best. But some will not. These are the kids I'm worried about. Their chances for adoption are negatively affected by these laws.

I totally agree! I have friends who do this, too. Unfortunately having worked in the system, my experience is that most of them were not like this at all.

What Ashley said. :)

There is no cost to adopt from foster care . . .