PA or Oregon Subsidies?

May 4, 2010

We're looking into two profiles of children that we are highly interested in.

One is a brother sister in Penn, in which the boy has "Kleinfelter's" (believe that's XXY Syndrome).

The other is a teenage girl in a minority group from Oregon who sounds like she may have some mild emotional issues.

I've tried talking with our caseworkers, but they get upset when you talk about adopting children from out of state and either don't really know or want to answer any questions on those kids. They haven't told us to go against adopting in another state, but they are very pushy for Texas children.

So I am curious if anyone can tell me about potential subsidies that might be possible for either of these profiles (including paying for college and medical cards). I know in Texas the requirements are likely very different, but I assume if you adopt a child in a different state there would still be some things covered (and the "disease" or emotional treatment is a big concern).

Barksum

May 4, 2010

I was just talking with our former adoptive CW (we no longer have an open homestudy and are done adopting) and found out that the adoption subsidy process in OR has changed drastically in the last year or so. They still haven't caught up with new forms yet, even. Anyway, the CW was saying that now you have to itemize what expenses you would incur for the care of the child, and this does not include respite care or anything that the medical card would cover. I don't believe that respite care is covered by the subsidy or the medical card, so I think you're out of luck for any recompense for respite. You'd have to list the costs you anticipate will be incurred and list them out and ask for that amount of subsidy.

If the child is Title IV-E eligible then the federal govt kicks in some $$ toward the subsidy and benefits provided, which is helpful when you adopt across state lines. There's info on the web about Title IV-E eligibility, so you can do a search for that.

The medical card is good, but...as with anything provided by the govt (state or fed) there are limitations and restrictions and it can be frustrating, sometimes in the extreme, to get coverage for some of the services needed. Ask for the info on what is/is not covered when you get info about the medical card. Do they cover psychiatric therapies? What about psychiatric hospital stays? How long? Stuff like that. Came back to add: Who are the covered providers for various medical and pych services in your area? Are these the providers you want to use? If the covered providers are a 2 or a 6 hour drive from your home, is that going to be an issue? Might also be something to itemize on your subsidy request; travel for medical appointments, x number of miles, x number of times per week/month/year.

OR is an 'odd' state in that they only do worker-to-worker contact, so if you want info about a waiting child in OR your cw has to contact the child's cw. They don't talk directly to the prospective adoptive parents until they've had worker contact and they've decided that they might be interested in you as an adoptive family.

Came back AGAIN to add that I think many cw's tend to want their a-parents to adopt in state children vs. out of state children. ICPC can be very icky to try to navigate and usually the cw's on either end aren't familiar with the issues the cw' on the other end are facing, paperwork req's are different, etc. etc. ICPC is a process where they want EVERY i dotted and EVERY t crossed in just the right color and font or they kick it out and you have to do it over. CW's often aren't fond of doing this kind of 'extra' paperwork, esp. when they aren't familiar with all the exact reqs for any given state or county. It can be done (we did one out of state adoption), and can even go smoothly with little or no hiccups. Just I don't think that cw's want to do this if they don't have to.