Do you have adoption assistance thru your employer?

6-12 weeks off, can have more, pay depends, you can use up vacation for part, get 60% or unpaid. it all varies. 5k for full time, 2500 for part time, after adoption completed. i just accepted a shift with more scheduled hours (i was unscheduled/pool status for a year). i plan on taking 6 weeks off and will take the part time adoption assistance.

Thanks for all of the great responses. My employer has never really been faced with employees who are adopting, so I'm using this as a way to educate them. I have found several articles about how employers are recognizing the need for adoption leave, so I plan to incorporate those facts in my proposal as well. As for how I plan to pitch the idea: I'm in HR, so I hope that it will make a difference since I'm so familiar with our policies already. Then I'm going to write a proposal for the change and include facts and examples of bonding with a child who has been separated from their first caregiver, many facts about attachment, and simply the need for equality between the two (or more!) ways families grow. I'm really not asking for much other than to be able to use my sick leave. That, combined with my vacation, should allow me to take 6 weeks paid and six weeks unpaid. I want to use every available moment to bond and build a relationship with our baby girl, and help our 2.5 yr old DS adjust, too. Thanks again for the great responses. I'll let you know how it turns out!

My employer gave me 6 weeks paid time off as adoption leave and 5K. I could also use FMLA. Also, my manager was kind enough to let me roll over vacation from the previous year. My DH got whatever time off he wanted and 5K too. I'm glad to see employers are recognizing the bonding time is as important with adoption as childbirth. Laura

My husband and I are the first faculty members to adopt a child (in our case children) in 25 years! Needless to say there was no adoption leave in our contract. After very open conversations with our superintendent, my principal, union reps and school board personnel they are adding adoption leave to the contract and will make it retroactive for us if our girls come home before the new contract year. Otherwise it will be in the contract for next year. I will take 6 weeks maternity leave with pay using my accumulated sick days and then have 3 personal days, 2 family leave days and they will give me 3 more family leave days if I have used all my personal days. Needless to say we were thrilled but I think one of the keys was being very open with everyone about our adoption plans and understanding that without contract language or any precidents set recently we needed to give everyone time to think things through. Now with all the groundwork in place the girls will probably come home in May just as we get out of school! We will take it whenever we can get it!!!! Good Luck! Renee

7 days of pay, and $1500 adoption benefit. I may also take 12 weeks FMLA. Kathleen

My company gives you 2 paid weeks off that must be taken within the first 4 weeks you are home for bonding purposes. You can then add any vacation, personal days, sick time and FMLA. They also gave me $4000.

$10,000 adoption assistance with no paid time off. I used vacation and FMLA and took two months off.

Hopefully you're looking for both sides of the fence. I work for a company of about 400. We are more of a utility (government) type corporation than a "product" company. It is a very stable company to work for. (I'm telling you all of this because I think it's important in terms of our benefits). We have fully paid medical and dental insurance, supplemental insurance, etc. The only bad thing is that they really don't give a hoot about mothers/women or women's issues. Especially in my TX office which has literally 10 women and only two of us are in leadership positions. There is no maternity, paternity leaves, only FMLA. I am taking 12 weeks FMLA leave. I HAVE to use my 3 weeks of vacation and personal time. Then the rest is UNPAID. I'm lucky to have a empathetic and trusty management team who will let me ease back to work and do some WFH during the transition. Hubby works for the same company. He will be taking an unpaid FMLA leave as well. Those of you who are eligible for FMLA AND have maternity/adoption benefits are very LUCKY! We have nothing of that nature. Birth mothers at least get STD while they are at home... I will get nothing. It's very frustrating. I've heard of some rumbling of adoption benefits, but the "leave" will not change. Good luck to you.

Last employer (large hospital in Seattle): no financial assistance, but qualifies for full maternity leave as if for a birth child. Maternity leave is first covered by sick time then vacation and unpaid up to three months if you don't have leave to cover. Current employer (Children's Hospital, Seattle): $2,500 assistance and same as above for leave time except they don't have sick/vacation, rather just PTO.

Thanks for the latest responses. Yes, I'm glad to hear both sides. I just think it's ridiculous to treat adoptive parents differently than birthparents. I'm trying to remind myself that the powers that be probably don't even think about it seeming discriminatory since they probably have not been personally touched by adoption. Maybe with our prodding they will come around. I'm going to work on my proposal in the next few weeks and see what I can do. Thanks again everyone. I appreciate the feedback!

The company that I worked for gave us $8,000, but I didn't even get 2 weeks off. Sounds worse than it was. We adopted domestically and were a long distance from my office. However, the nature of my position meant that the company was at risk if I were not keeping my finger on the pulse, so I took a few minutes a day to check on things remotely. My employer considered that a working day. So, we returned home without me even being charged a vacation day. I took a week off still linking remotely and then went back to the office. DH had 2 weeks paternity benefits at his office and then took FMLA for 12 weeks. It was a good thing I wasn't 'charged' any time, because 2 months later my father became critically ill and passed away. Same deal, though, as long as I logged in and sometimes handled emergencies, I wasn't charged any time. Having said all that, the company went broke, delisted and was acquired. I left the company before all that happened. I still feel kind of guilty.

My firm is great! They have a wonderful maternity leave policy and it extended to my adoption as well. You get 2 weeks paid leave for every year of employment up to 10 weeks. After the 10 weeks you are allowed to take vacation/sick time. I took off 13 weeks with my son. All were paid.

Both of my last 2 companies offered 2 weeks 'parental leave' (w/ 100% pay and benefits). This could be for adoptive parents or an employee who's partner gave birth. I think the more inclusive a policy is, the more likely it is to be adopted.

I work for a large corporation and we get no adoption time off. You can use your vacation time and then any additional time you want to take has to fall under the FMLA (up to 12 weeks without pay). They do have $3,500 reimbursement after you bring the child home. They do have 6 weeks maturnity leave and the reason they gave that it's different is the time off is not for bonding with the child but medical recovery from the delivery. I guess they've never been through the pain of adoption.

The Dave Thomas Foundation has tons of resources for you to help you do this. Just go to [url=http://www.davethomasfoundationforadoption.org/]Foster care adoption- information, resources, how to adopt, for parent, employers, and the adoption community[/url] and file a request for more information.