Advertisements
Advertisements
We have been working with an agency to adopt domestically for about four months.
We have completed an online application and paid the associated fee, and an adoption education session and paid the associated fee.
Following this, we recently completed a second 'application' which included: a check list entitled "Considerations Regarding a Child"; a detailed questionnaire; a program checklist (which covers 'salient points' about the program); Rights & Responsibilities checklist; and an "Understanding & Agreement" contract-like document.
We mailed these last five documents to our agency; they responded that they wanted photos of us and our home; we sent those.
Then they responded with an email stating "Your application is currently being reviewed ........." but then in the next paragraph of the email said " We want to let you know that for the past year we have been only accepting applications from families who are open to non-Caucasian children".
This is the first time we have heard about this as a factor in their application process; it is not mentioned on their web site, their application, any of the paperwork we've received from them, it was not addressed in their education session. We cannot tell if our application is being considered or not; or if we are being asked to automatically accept this caveat so that the process can move forward.
We now feel defensive about our desire for a Caucasian child and are willing to admit that we may be coming from a place of inexperience about raising a child in a transracial environment; however, we feel that this ignorance comes from a place of concern, that we could not provide said child with appropriate cultural experiences experiences which this agency emphasized the importance of at their own education session. An education session that did not provide any cross-cultural competency training.
Further, they state in their program checklist (which one must sign off on) that unless we accept a child who meets the stated criteria in the 'Considerations' document (the document were we must now indicate we are open to children of other races) we forfeit our matching fee and will be terminated from the program. The 'Considerations' document does not give the option for choosing Caucasian or non-Caucasian, just the typical race categories are listed.
We are feeling forced into accepting something we are not comfortable with. Do we continue to work with an agency we feel acted dishonestly (on purpose or by miscommunication) and we have lost a certain level of trust with? Or, are we over reacting and just naive and this agency is asking us to accept an inevitable reality, and we should continue to work with them?
Would you mind saying which agency you are working with? We are looking for recommendations for agencies in Oregon.
Advertisements
This is a fairly quiet forum....you might want to post in the general forum to get more responses.
FWIW Generally agencies have a checklist that allows you to choose what you are comfortable with, this usually includes race.
The majority of adoptions involve non Caucasian children, the wait time for Caucasian children is often counted in years not months. It is very likely that this agency has a 4 year or more waiting list for Caucasian children, or that they have only had a few situations that involved placing Caucasian children in the last few years. Since this affects their placement wait times, it is possible that they are trying to explain that it is unlikely that they can help you adopt unless you are open to other races. I think you will find this to be the case with most agencies.
I would never work with an agency that threatened to keep my money if I did not go through with a situation I was not comfortable with. If I were in your shoes I would consider taking a class on transracial adoption, maybe it will help you make a decision regarding parenting a child of another race. I would also sign up with as many referral services as possible. I can PM the names of the reputable services, including the one we used to find our daughter. The referral services work with hundreds of agencies and so it is possible that they would have access to Caucasian situations.
The reality of adoption today is that situations involving Caucasian children have the longest wait times and the highest expenses. The most recent situation I have seen involved fees of $45,000. I'm not saying that it can't be done, it will just likely involve a long wait and a lot of money.
Feel free to PM me
Danielle