looking for adoption support and epal

Florida is very disorganized. Do you have a family development specialist and is he/she searching for you? We had a terrible time with the Hillsborough County agency and are going to start the process over with the Pinellas County agency. What age/sex are you trying to adopt?

we're not using a social worker or anyone else to help us - maybe that's the problem. We're looking for 2-3 children ages 2-9;the county we livein which is Clay County is primarily focused on adopting out kids here, they're not really interested in adopting out through other counties. Also, we had our home study done by a private agency so we wouldn't have to wait a year for the county to get it done.

You will find that no agency wants to adopt out kids to other counties. It is a big hassle for them and the workers don't make enough money to justify the drives back and forth. They will only do it with a lot of pressure from above. I know a couple that spent over a year pursuing 2 kids in a neighboring county and after that year they were told they were no longer being considered because the agency found a family in the county. Florida is in a state of change. The governor decided a few years ago to privitize 1/2 of the process. DCF (or in some counties the sherriff) still takes the kids from their parents. The part of finding them foster homes and/or adoptive parents is in the process of being contracted out to various private agencies. For example, in Pinellas county, the private agency that has a contract w/ DCF is Safe Children's Coalition which is run by the Sarasota YMCA. The SCC has several counties under it and it is very large. They just took over Pinellas after an agency called Family Continuity folded last July. We don't want an infant so in my county I basically have 2 options, 1) Learn to work with Safe Children Coalition. This is basically free to do but can take a long time. 2) Find a private agency, not under contract w/ the state, that handles Special needs kids (kids over the age of 5, siblings, handicapped, etc. are all special needs). I did found one agency in our area called Gift of Life but they charge $12,000 for special needs adoption and they are going to be finding me kids from the same pool of children that SCC will be using. I don't know how much reading you've done on the age range you want. I didn't do much and after spending 10 months trying to meet, visit and adopt an 11 year old, things fell apart and we had a disrupted adoption. A friend of mine encouraged me to do some reading on Reactive Attachment Disorder and now I'm kicking myself for not spending a few months getting a better understanding of kids with RAD. The boy was not diagnosed w/ RAD but now when I read the symptoms I realize a lot of his behaviors could have been addressed if we had been more informed. My best suggestion for you to get started is to call the Florida Adoption Information Center at 1 800 96-ADOPT. Ask them who in Clay county is the agency contracted with DCF in your county. They can also give you the names and numbers of private agencies in your area. The match process in Florida is a mess. If you can find a good care manager in the Clay county's agency handling adoptions, they might be able to represent you at match meetings as your family development specialist. Match meetings take place once a month. From my understanding, a match meeting is where the family development specialists (they have your file) meet with the care managers that have children available for adoption. The care managers present the kids and the family development specialists consider if you will be a good match. If you are then they give you some generic information. If you decide you want more info. then they schedule a formal presentation. This is where they are supposed to give you everythingthey know about the kids. This should have a child study, psych evaluations, medical histories, academic performance, etc. Do notmeet the children until you have this information. It's hard to fall out of love with these kids after you meet them. After the presentation, if you decide you want to meet the children then they go about arranging a short visit and then it goes on from there... This is long so I'll stop here.

I know how hard it is to work with the state of Florida, we are in the process right now. We are lucky enough to have a child placed with us as a pre-adoptive placement. I do have a question though, is over 5 considered special needs in Florida? I thought it was over 8. Just wondering because when the adoption goes though it would be nice to continue receiving subsidies. Not that I have received any yet and she's been here 4 months.

This is an example of how messed up this state is. Before we could take placement of our child (the one that ended in disruption) we had to wait 1 month for someone in the Adoptions Dept. to do the child subsidy before we could meet him. I would ask your care manager why you aren't getting your subsidies. If you are fostering you should be receiving them. If you are a pre-adoptive placement, you should have been given a document spelling out the terms of the subsidy. Don't expect to get paid for the past 4 months. But I would definitely look into it so that you can use the money for a college fund for your daughter (or a Roth IRA which my husband says was heaven sent). It's not just special needs kids that get subsidies. They vary by state and age but in Florida it is my understanding that all kids have a subsidy spelled out and agreed to at the time you take placement. In FL they are also supposed to get their tuition paid if they start college/techical school/etc. the fall after they graduate from high school. They can't take a year off and wander around Europe and still get their college paid by the state.

how do you get a family development specialist we have inquired about several children most been placed never heard back from the cw we were approved home study everything done we are waiting to be matched what's up with this system we live in pasco approved Nov,2006

Hi, I was off the board but your message arrived in my email box. My husband and I gave up on the FL system. We tried for over a year and ended up adopting from China. We are getting ready to search for our second daughter from China. Good luck. Elaine

Did they tell you it would take a year to get your homestudy done?.just curious... I live in Duval and my homestudy was scheduled the day all my clearances came back....and I could have had the fisrt visit the next day if I wanted to, but I was moving so I scheduled it for 2 weeks later (granted I'm going the foster to adopt route) but wow a year that's ridiculous