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 adoptive homes and to support families throughout their journey.
Adopting from Foster Care
Foster care adoption is the adoption of a child from foster care whose biological parents’ rights are terminated by a court. Most of these children have experienced great trauma and loss. They may have been drug exposed, experienced abuse, or have developmental disabilities. The average child remains in foster care for two years and the average age of children waiting is 8 years old. These children need patient, loving, supportive, and committed adoptive families.
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.
Getting Started
The adoption process begins by filling out an application for child placement. Once the application is approved the adoption home study begins. There will be many requirements that need to be met before the home study is approved. These requirements will typically include: fire inspection, medical evaluation, financial statement, safety audit of home, training, and other documents pertinent to the applicant and the home. On average a home study takes six months to be approved.
Once approved our team actively begins searching for available children on your behalf, called matching. We will help facilitate the matching process and the placement (after matching) of the child into your home. The child must be placed in your home for six months before you can finalize the adoption in court. Once the adoption is finalized, you are now the legal parent(s). We will continue to support your family after the adoption is finalized with whatever you may need through our OAKS program.