WOW!!! This is the coolest forum in adoption.com!!!

Please send all agency discussion via PM. Thanks!

Hello fellow Wisconsinites! My husband and I are excited to begin researching adoption options. We live in the Madison area and would love any referrals (via PM) to reputable agencies in the Madison and/or Milwaukee area for domestic or international adoptions. I've read we should start with informational meetings with agencies to get a feel for their policies/procedure. Do you have any suggestions for "doing things right" for a newbie? Thanks in advance! jolee

WELCOME!! Yes, it's a good idea to research some agency's before you choose one. Gather a list of questions you want to know. Ask several agency's them. Go with your gut is a good idea. :) As far as agency's go...there are MANY in the Madison/Milwaukee area. Everyone will have a different opinion. Just do your research. GOOD LUCK!!! Deb

We are in the center of Wisconsin and have been on this journey for many years now; with alot of road bumps and curves. We have now resubmitted and are going international as our heart requires a sure thing this time, we have used a wonderful agency out of Madison each time we are about 115 miles North of there. This time were are planning on a sibling set of 1-3 year old boys from Ethiopia.

Good Luck on your journey.....

I am from Madison, just seeing if anyone used adoptions of wisconsin and how it worked for them. please pm me

Hi, This is going to sound totally ignorant, but is "adoptions of Wisconsin" an agency? I've never heard of it if it is! If I didn't understand the question plez re-post!

My husband and I are parents to 5 bio children WI. We did foster care for two years (many years ago) through a different county (Monroe) and started again two years ago(Juneau). But despite waiting and hoping, our county keeps children in bio homes rather than go through the hassle of removing them (currently the county has only 6 children in foster care). Anyhow, in two years, we've only done respite two weekends (ended up the same weekend too). I've notified three surrounding counties (Monroe, Vernon, and LaCrosse) of our availability. Two said thanks but they are "in between" directors and someone would contact me when they get set up. The other county hasn't even responded. We continue to wait. I just assumed we would do domestic adoption through the counties, but are there better options we should explore for a sibling group? Hate to toot my own horn, but we are a great family. I am a special needs teacher, so I'm a wealth of knowledge. Our own children had ADHD and learning disabilities, so the inservices, conferences, counseling and parenting classes make us authorities on children in general. Our youngest is a senior this year and turned 18 this week. We decided that we are not ready to stop being actively involved in children's lives. As long as we have a large house, live in the country, and our health and sanity, we figured most of that is due to being involved in a family. Without those kids, we'll probably go crazy or die from boredom. We NEED those children as much as they need us. But where are they? After seeing our children all home at Thanksgiving and again this week, we know that keeping siblings together is so important and something we can easily do. We want a sibling group of 3 or 4. Anyhow, we went to the orientation meeting and filled out the interest survey. But the available siblings in WI seems very limited. I've been looking at every other state, but was wondering if there are more links someone can tell me about that we can be going through once our homestudy gets finalized. (I guess that will be 5 or 6 months down the road - maybe years, the way things have gone for us.) Also wondering if certain states stand out as ones to feel good about working with or others that we should steer clear of? It's so hard to watch the specials coming up about adoption, receive all the mailings on the need for foster and adoptive parenting and believe the issue is lack of available families. We're here, just waiting. Thanks for any points in the right direction. Patti

Hi Patti There are numerous sites to veiw available children and yes there are numerous states to avoid. IMHO! If you are going through a private agency for your home study it shouldn't take long. If not just keep bugging the worker! There are not many large sib groups where they are able to keep all the children together due to issues among them. But I have seen groups up to 7. Adoption has become highly competitive. Partly due to the restrictions on foreign adoptions, many are chosing to look at a bit older children nationally. I am assuming you are "mature" given your youngest is 18. This can be good or not. Ideally they look for a home with no children, 35-40'sh with lotz of experience. We fall into that "mature" range and even though they are not to discriminate due to age it happens. We had adopted 3x(singles )from Wisconsin. When we decided to adopt again due to the safety issues of our children already in the home I would not take a child diagnosed with RAD or perp. So we decided to go with a medically fragile child. There are so many lingering in group homes/f. homes due to people unable to take on that type of responsibility. Also, I might add that when you see the numbers of children available and waiting this is not accurate. As you know foster parents have the first option to adopt(given there ability) so many of these children are actually not "available" but waiting for the TPR or being converted from foster to adopt. The process before a child gets placed on the US adopt sites are: First they look within there county, then state, then nationally. So the faces of the children available from other states "usually" come with much baggage. With the exception of the large sib groups where there are fewer homes able to accomidate, the minority, and the medically fragile. So the more open you are to diversity the better chances of being considered. Once your study is completed....... IMHO, you need to be active in advocating for yourselves. Don't depend soley on a worker, they do not have the time. Make copies of your study and send them to all the workers that have children that you might be interested in. Then follow through with phone calls, e-mails etc. We also attached a brief bio of our family with pic's to our study it seems to make it more personal. Sorry so long. I've been where you are at. We finally found(on our own) our 4th child 1 & 1/2 yrs. ago from Washington state. He is highly medically fragile and is our angel! If there's anything else I can do to help let me know. I have web sites and where to start and where to avoid! Good Luck & Happy Holidays,

Thanks for all your insights. I appreciate every bit of advice! As I said, since we are "in" the system as foster parents through the counties, we assumed we would go through them to adopt. But in all your experienced opinions, would it be better for us to go privately when we are thinking of a sibling group of 3 or 4? We actually didn't think sibling groups would be available privately.

:confused: Hi, I'm sorry for the confusion, private adoption is "mostly used" for infant or relative and I'm assuming you're looking at special needs adoption. The private part came from, some people choose to have there home study done by a private agency. If you would like any specifics on sites etc. it would be best to e-mail as there's only so much info that is considered exceptable on this forum. Otherwise keep posting and share your progress... Good Luck on your venture & Happy Holidays

Milwaukee suburbs. Our youngest was born in Guatemala. :)

Anyone in the LA Crosse area?

Hi! We're in the Fox Cities. Our DD, was placed in our arms through a newborn, domestic, transracial adoption. She was born in Madison. We are thinking of adding to our family through eith another domestic adoption or through the state. We're undecided as of yet. For those of you who've gone the state route, I'd love to hear about your experiences!

Hi everyone! I'm from Janesville WI! Hoping to adopt domestically in Feb 2010! Just ran into a major bump in our adoption today so hopefully things work out! We're using an agency in Janesville.