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I have noticed several children ages 18-21 listed on an adoption website. While some have obvious disabilities, others seem like "average" (for lack of a better word) kids.
I am curious as to what an adoption of an 18+ year old entails. What are the intentions, both of someone adopting a person this age that they didn't know, as well as the "child" in wanting to be adopted? What are the adoptive parents expected to do/provide? Would the adult aged "child" be moving into the new adoptive home? I would assume there would not be any adoption subsidies at this age, would there?
There seem to be some great kids out there that just want a family to call their own. I'm interested in how this works.
Also, for adoption subsidies, for a child still in high school past the age of 18, I am confused on if the subsidy stops on the child's 19th birthday, or when they graduate high school?
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I think the intentions would be very individual to the child/young adult and family in each case. We just recently took in a 22 year old who aged out of foster care without ever getting adopted. Long story short - he is the brother of our daughter who we adopted out of foster care 7 years ago. He is now living with us and we are going to support him as he works on going to college, getting a job, etc, just as we would for a bio child of this age. He's very much a regular kid, who never got to have the life a regular kid deserves.
He has never been allowed to feel like part of a family, and he really wants that connection. He wants a mom and a room and chores and family vacations and all that. Some foster kids this age will want that connection that they missed, while others will not be open to it or not willing to take a chance by opening themselves up to a family. It depends on the individual.
Kids over 14 rarely get adopted from foster care, which is sad to me. I can't imagine aging out of the system at 18-21 and having no one to turn to, nowhere to go for holidays, no one to guide me in life. However, obviously, the child has to want to be adopted and has to be willing to take a leap of faith in trusting a new family when likely many families have let them down in the past.
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Depending on the state, some states continue subsidy until age 21 or will continue it until done with high school.I am also interested in this teen group. I mostly look at 14-17, but sometimes see even the older ones and wonder if I could parent them. I do not think I would want to take on a child older than my oldest because I would want to have experience with that age first. I think of my birth children who have had relatively easy lives and all the parental support they need. I cannot imagine if they did not have this. that is why I want to take on teens.
