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We are two women looking to adopt 2 boys in the 5-12 range. We have taken all of our classes and have our home visit scheduled for next Thursday. The lady at the agency said she expects that within two weeks after the home visit we can start looking at kids, because she already has all our other stuff and our homestudy will be complete. We have looked at adoption photolisting. Are there other places we should be looking? How complicated is it to adopt out of state? What is the timeline we are looking at? What kinds of costs are we looking at?I haved mixed feelings about the agency I went with. I went with this agency because it is the only one around here. The people there are very nice and are totally fine with us being gay. They have been doing adoption since 1985 and have never had a gay couple, but say they are willing to learn what they need to, etc. They do not do foster kids themselves, but help kids currently in foster care get adopted. They are not a SWAN agency but do SWAN adoptions. They said that we will have to pay for our home study, but SWAN will reimburse us....BUT then they said that we won't get our home study because SWAN will pay it. I have a lot of questions I feel I need to ask them, but would like help from you guys to know exactly what questions I need to be sure to ask. At this point I don't know what anything is going to cost me, etc. I initially went into the idea of straight adoption to avoid the foster roller coaster and pain, knowing it would cost me more this way. Then I found out you can get monthly stipends, reimbursement etc. I feel like there is so little that I know and so much that I don't know.I appreciate any help or direction you can offer.
Last update on November 17, 10:39 am by Sachin Gupta.
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We completed our adoptions a couple of years ago, but some of what you are saying raises some flags to me. 1- If I had to pay for the homestudy - then I want the copy of it. We didn't to pay for our homestudy, but were told that if we changed to a non PA foster care adoption, then we would have to pay for it. 2- How many adoptions from foster care have they done? or is this more of a bait and switch thing? They tell you how SWAN will pay for it and then present you with a 'private adoption' that is perfect for you . . but costs $xx,xxx? 3- Not all the kids are listed on the websites, they should have told you that. After we were approved we got to go through a paper list. I also spoke with the local counties and told them what we were looking for in a match. When our girls became available, the county called our agency and requested us. I would also recommend seeing if you can find out if your local counties have done adopitons to gay couples. I know that there is a county in my area that will do ANYTHING it can to prevent adoptions cross race, and I wouldn't be surprised if counties can get away with that . . . yeah stupid people ****. I do know that there are PA counties that are more then ok with it - my oldest dtrs sister was adopted by a gay couple, foster to adopt.
At our meeting yesterday we asked for straight answers. We do not have to pay for home study unless we go outside of SWAN, in which case they said that most likely another state would have a SWAN equivalent that could pay it. The caseworker we have plans to call on all sets of kids on that meet our criteria on the adoptus site. She said that we may run into some obstacles with being gay. She feels we do have a good advantage, because I am a therapist with a state job. I specifically deal with behaviors and positive/negative reinforcement as consequences.The agency is reputable and in a very small town, so if they were a scam they couldn't have existed for so long. The agency itself has existed since the 1800's, doing adoption since 1985.
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Melissa_29, seriously 4 years! How very depressing! I hear of all the needs out there and how they are desperate for people to adopt from foster care in PA, but then to hear the wait time! I understand they say it depends on how open you are. We are open to any race or ethnicity but do have a lower age range 8 and under. This is just frustrating. Are you with an private agency or county? Feel free to PM me.
Best of luck to all.
We are looking for boys of any race in the 5-12 range. The agency we are going through is a private agency. The caseworker said that she can find boys and call their caseworkers or we can. What we agreed on is we will start with a list of kids we are interested in and she will call about all of them. I work in a prison and don't have access to a phone during the day, so it's best if she contacts caseworkers for the children for us.
Things are virtually the same for gay parents as for straight parents. You will have some placements that they will say are not appropriate, but overall you should find the process to be fair.
Make sure your caseworker stays in contact with your county's Children and Youth office. This is your best source for local children. Also, you need to make sure you get to matching events and introduce yourselves to caseworkers from child placement agencies as well.
We are currently fostering 2 and 3 year old brother/sister which are SWAN eligible but never made it into SWAN since we picked them up from court the day they were put into foster care. This was through our agency and their connections with the county.
We hesitated on foster care at first, but it did allow us to get children faster and now it look slike there is a good chance of the case going to adoption in the future. It's a tough system, but if you have a caring caseworker you can make it through.
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There usually aren't many kids removed in our county. The other thing is that we want to avoid that huge emotional roller coaster and playing with parents, etc. We are currently only looking at legally free for adoption kids.
Our agency is trying to get SWAN to pay for the study, but we have the option of not going with PA even though SWAN will pay for it. We will just have to pay the $1600 after the fact, if we go to another state. Our agency is willing to accept whatever payment we can pay. We were also told that many other states have something similar to SWAN where they can pay SWAN back for us.
hi there! my hubby & I are also from PA. We just got licensed to fost/adopt in may 2011. We are with a local agency who have never worked w/SWAN before so we are their first! Don't know if that's good or bad! They have done domestic & intrnationl adoptions but not foster care! They are learning & so are we! I am now wondering if I should be trying to contact people thru CYS in other counties or leaving ALL the work up to our caseworker?! I really don't know much about the whole process but know I don't wanna wait years for a match(if I can speed up the process somehow). SWAN is paying for our home study($2,500) if we only adopt from PA! If we choose a child from another state then we would have to pay for it!(home study) I too am searching for any advice/tips I can get to move the process along faster. It's so very hard to b patient when you know you have the love in your heart and can b sharing it with a child NOW! I'm trying to be patient since I know the perfect match will come in due time! Keep in touch & good luck!
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We would have had to pay our agency $1600 or we could let SWAN pay it. Problem is if we do not adopt in PA then we would owe our agency $2500, when we could have paid $1600. So we have opted to pay the $1600 ourselves, and if we happen to adopt in PA then SWAN may be able to reimburse. But there are not too many kids in PA in the age range we are looking at.