State or Agency

We adopted from Russia so we used an agency. The agency is out of state, but they have a local office so we still have local events, support, etc.

I also did an international adoption. My home study agency was local, but my placing agency was in MO.

We didn't adopt - but we did have our foster care license in Dekalb County, but only for one day :)We moved the day after we got it, but we hadn't planned it that way. We're not in Illinois anymore - and I sure miss the ease involved in getting your license there...man o man...what a pain Arizona is!

We used an attorney in Chicago to adopt from IL, we live in WI. Then the Birth Mom had an agency represent her. Deb

I am a birth mother and I went to DCFS.

We adopted locally from an agency in the suburbs. THis time around, we are trying to adopt independently using advertising and word of mouth; it's been a very bumpy road as most situations have come close but have not worked out for one reason or another. I guess we should have just registered with the agency again and waited around...I'm not getting any younger here :-)

Hi Kirsty,We did the opposite of you and still had a super bumpy road with our second and third adoptions. When our first was 3 we signed back on with the agency. We had SOooooo many almosts, but birth mothers would change their minds or birth family members would come forward and we had an awful time. Our agency suggested we post our profile on adoption.com to further our chances or finding a child. After 10 months of fielding some promising inquiries (and some very weird ones, too) we decided to go international. We found our Russian son through a different agency and cancelled our profile on adoption.com. After returning from our first trip to Russia we got an e-mail from a teenage couple in Kentucky that they had printed our profile off of adoption.com months earlier and wanted to talk to us about adopting their soon to be born baby girl. And that's how we ended up with three. You wouldn't believe some of the stories in between these three, though. What a crazy process....definitely not for the faint of heart.Would love to talk to you more.Magee

I have fostered and adopted. I imagine that none of us had an easy time growing our families! Another poster mentioned this is not for the faint of heart. How true. Lots of patience, about the process, about the people involved, but now that our family has grown - I can barely remember the more challenging times. There sure were some pretty joyful moments in the process that certainly outweighed any heartbreak! What was the most challenging part for some of you? Jamie

What is best -- agency or state? We're planning on trying to adopt a waiting child/children in Illinois and the agency I talked to didn't seem to know much. I've got calls in to DCFS, too. We have three bio kids but think we have room for more. I'm worried about the difficulty of foster to adopt breaking our kids' hearts if they have a new brother/sister move in only to move out again. Anyone have experience with this in Illinois? Thanks!

I know many families who have fostered and adopted. I think that it takes a lot of stamina to foster/adopt from a public agency and that private adoption can be a different kind of heartache. It depends on your family's needs too and it's important to know yourselves before you estimate what you can give a child. Helping a child reach his or her potential has always been our promary goal. I've adopted the attitude that I don't know how long I will have my bio kids - like anyone can predict the future we have with our kids? - so in some way, the unpredictability of fostercare hasn't been too painful. And so we've done it again and again. My kids at home have learned a lot about different kinds of people/ different kinds of families. If you asked any of them - I'm sure they'd say we've had some amazing experiences and they wouldn't change any of it.

We did a combination adoption - e.g., we used a non-profit agency (Lutheran Child & Family Services) to do our homestudy, then found the foster children we were interested in adopting. LCFS handled the contacts with the state agencies, but it was still an adoption from foster care. In this scenario, we only looked at kids who were already TPR'd or were very close to TPR, to avoid the issue of placement disruption. The downside is, it may take longer to for a placement. Once we had our homestudy completed, took about a year of applying for various kids before we were successful. It was hard, because you often hear NOTHING back for months at a time, but this is much less intrusive than having a placement that doesn't work out.