All Children Deserve Families
There are over 155,000 children in foster care waiting across the country to be adopted. Each year over 20,000 children emancipate from foster care and are never adopted. These children deserve a permanent, safe and loving home to support them throughout their life. Adopt America Network works diligently to help place children in safe loving adoptive homes and to support the families throughout their journey together.
Adopting Children from Foster Care
Foster care adoption is the adoption of a child in foster care whose biological parents’ rights are terminated by a court. These children may have been physically, sexually, or emotionally abused. They may have been drug exposed or have learning disabilities. Many of the children have physical and emotional challenges. All of the children have experienced trauma with many of them having attachment difficulties. The average child waits for an adoptive family for over three years and the average age of children waiting is 8 years old. These children need patient, loving, supportive and committed adoptive families to help them heal and be successful in life.
To become an adoptive parent you must meet certain qualifications. These will vary depending on your state, for example, some states allow people who are 18 years old to adopt while other states require adoptive parents to be a minimum of 21 years old. You must pass background checks and a child abuse and neglect registry check. You can be single, married, or divorced. Adoptive parents will need to have a safe home, rented or owned. Each applicant will need to be healthy enough to care for a child and be financially capable of caring for a child. Every adoptive parent will need training and education in order to adopt a child from foster care. Click here for more information on training classes.
Getting Started
The adoption process begins by filling out an application for child placement. Once the application is approved the adoption homestudy begins. There will be many requirements that need to be met before the homestudy is approved which typically include but are not limited to: fire inspection, medical evaluation, financial statement, safety audit of home, training completed, and other documents pertinent to the applicant and the home. The homestudy on average takes 6 months to be approved.
Once approved our team actively begins searching for available children on your behalf. AAN will help facilitate the match and help with the placement of the child into your home. The child must be placed in your home for 6 months before you can finalize the adoption in court. Once the adoption is finalized, the child is legally yours. AAN will continue to support your family after the adoption is finalized with whatever you may need.
To learn more about adopting a child from foster care click here.
To learn more about international or private infant adoption click here.