Here is what I have learned about adopting a waiting child (one who is legally free for adoption) from foster care:
According to adoptuskids.com "There are 104,000 children in the U.S. foster care who are legally free and currently waiting for an adoptive home." Number of children/ sibling groups listed on adoptuskids as of today: 3911. Now, some of these are sibling groups of 2,3, even 6 kids, so to be fair lets double and round that number and say there are 8000 children listed on there. Some states, counties even have their own websites and don't post to adoptuskids, so lets add another 2000 for them. That makes 10,000 kids. Where are the other 90,000 that need homes? If these kids really are in need of homes, where are they and why can't I adopt them? I asked this question to one women who works at an adoption exchange whose purpose is to place waiting children. She said not all caseworkers put their children online, and her organization is trying to advocate for them to do so so that the children can be matched. According to adoptex.org, When a child is adopted it saves the state $28,000 per year versus the child being in foster care. PER YEAR, PER CHILD. After much, much research and reading of seemingly every post on every message board on the topic of adopting from the state, a few trends seem to be occuring across the country. First, many (most?) caseworkers don't like to adopt kids out to people who live in other states, or won't try to help parents adopt from other states. Some caseworkers flat out refuse, others send incomplete paperwork, others are slow in sending paperwork. Second, there are tons and tons of people who want to adopt from the state, they're just having issues with the process and having tons of holdups. Third, nothing is centralized. Now, in general I'm not big on large government agencies, or having any one department in charge of anything. But it seems ridiculous that each state, sometimes even each county in the state, has it's own rules and procedures regarding adoption from foster care. Northwest Florida wants 21 hours of adoption education, Tampa area wants 24. What? If there was a universally accepted homestudy it would make things so much easier for everyone involved. Also, some counties have their own photo listings with children that aren't listed anywhere else online, that no one would know about if you weren't specifically searching for them. Fourth, those online photo listings are deceiving. Many of the kids listed there are not actually available for adoption. I would guess at least one third of those listed really aren't available to adopt. Some have already been placed, some are left on there until adoption is finalized (6 months +), and more than once I have read some are placed on there to make the listing organization "look good." I inquired about one sibling group in California the same morning they were put on adoptuskids. They were unavailable. However, they did send me a big packet of info on adoption along with a list of kids from their county that were available, which was awesome. Perhaps they put the picture of the sibling group I was interested in as a marketing tool - or a bait and switch of sorts. Other states request your homestudy be sent each time you inquire before they will even tell you if a child is actually available (Because those of us wanting to adopt haven't jumped through enough hoops yet). Some states will only accept a homestudy from a state agency (like Georgia), others will consider any homestudy that meets their criteria. Georgia is only willing to work with us if we agree to not persue adoption through any other means, even though I was told we would wait years to adopt from them. We would not be allowed to be listed on any sites as a couple wanting to adopt, and wouldn't have access to our homestudy even if we were to be offered a baby. Then there is my shining beacon of hope - Florida. The state that seems the least messed up as far as adoption goes. Adoption rules there vary from region to region, but they will take a private homestudy. And some areas will even consider us if we have not taken all the mandatory education hours, if we are the best match for the child. Common sense takes hold, hallelujah! So if we ever end up adopting from foster care, it will most likely be from Florida. Overall, I'm shocked by how royally screwed up the system for adoption from foster care is. It could be done so much better, saving taxpayers millions annually. If the process were made easier and 20,000 more children were adopted this year from foster care (I believe it would be easy to reach that # if the process was more efficient, as normally 50,000 per year are adopted) it would save $560 million PER YEAR. And if next year another extra 20,000 were adopted, it would save an additional $560 million, for a total of 1.1 billion PER YEAR savings, etc. Maybe the states on the brink of bankruptcy should look at making it easier to adopt from foster care. I'm not sure how much federal funding goes into foster care, but a lot of money could be saved there too I'm sure if nationwide adoption procedures were enacted making it easier to adopt across state lines. The whole thing makes me want to scream. So what do we do? What would you do? Gavin is turning 5 shortly, and we're going to Seaworld! We need a vacation.
*addendum 1/30/2013* I just looked up the link between federal funding and state foster care. Turns out most of the funding for state foster care comes from the federal govt, in some states all the funding. When less kids are in foster care the states receive less $. In many cases there is no monetary incentive to lower the # of kids in foster care. There you go. It's a good thing there are still a lot of decent, caring caseworkers out there or else no kid would ever leave foster care. There is a new waiver program whereby some states can get increased funding for reducing the # of kids in foster care, and also providing them more flexibility in spending federal funds. The jury is still out, but it seems to be working in a few states so far. Guess which was the 1st state to try this out in 2006 when it was briefly offered by the feds - yep, good old Florida, God bless 'em. Between 2006 and 2010 they reduced the # of kids in foster care by 35%!!!! http://childwelfarewaivers.blogspot.com/
