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Long time lurker, first post! I hope someone can help me with this question. My husband and I reside in Indiana and are in the beginning stages of adopting from foster care. We have been in touch with DCS here and are waiting to hear back to schedule classes. We are interested in adopting a sibling group/older child(ren) - though because we are both only in our late twenties, we are not pursuing the adoption of teenagers.However, we do not want to limit ourselves to adopting from only Indiana. I am originally from Texas and still have family there and we both have familial ties to Kentucky (to which we are conveniently located as well). When I mentioned this to our DCS, they advised us that we should use a private agency if we seriously intended to pursue out-of-state kids because the agency is very busy and can't send out our home study all the time to other states at the expense of Indiana's waiting kids (makes sense!) So I called two private agencies in Indiana, and was told, so long as I wasn't completely foreclosing the possibility of kids from Indiana, to go through Indiana's DCS for our training/home study. I was passed around a lot, giving me the impression that interstate adoption from foster care wasn't something they commonly dealt with. I then contacted Kentucky to ask their preference, and one woman told me to go through Indiana's DCS and another said it did not matter! The latter woman recommended getting a copy of our home study and mailing it to KY, and they would keep it on file for a year. I'm not sure how likely the success of a match would be using that method...I also contacted Ohio on a whim because we saw a sibling group from there we were interested in, and they told us to go through our state for the training process/home study! Texas' DFPS website simply advises to use a licensed agency for our home study.So what should I do?! Does anyone have any experience with this? If you had a successful interstate adoption from foster care, who did you use, your state or private agency? None of the three states I contacted directly seemed thrilled by the prospect of dealing with interstate adoption, and almost seemed to discourage it. Has anyone encountered this reluctance?
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Here is what I would do:1) Get licensed to foster/adopt with the state (KY). If it is possible to do it through a private agency, then do that as you'll get more personal attention (at least that is how it feels after 2 years with a private agency). If KY doesn't do that, then don't worry about it. But you will NEED the foster-adopt license to get a foster child unless you are kin (and even then, depending). Texas would require you to have training similar what they provide here. 2) Write up a profile (Adoption photolisting has suggestions on what to include). When you submit interest on a child, write the worker. Say anything you need to in connection with those individual children (for example, since my adopted daughter is a competitive gymnast, I might mention that similarity as well as how great our gym is if one of the children is interested in gymnastics. For one child, I looked up the volunteer requirements of our local petting zoo as well as the big city's jr zoo keeper program. Those sorts of things.) Then I'd include the profile also. Most of the time, you'll never hear back because the child wasn't really available or any number of other issues. Sometimes you will. Sometimes it will just be asking for your homestudy. SOmetimes it will be more information to see if you want to. Every time, but once, when we've gotten more information we've backed out so the homestudy wasn't necessary.3) I know as a Texan, my homestudy is available on the TARE website. It was just sent at the beginning of the process. I don't know if it would be done similarly for out of state. If so, that would help considerably. Of course they are reluctant to do out of state adoptions. They are a pain in the neck and take forever. ICPC stinks royally. At the same time, sometimes it is necessary; and if your kid is out of state, it is a necessary evil. Anyway, so get a state foster-adopt license, do as much of the legwork yourself, and it'll work out in the end. And who knows? Your kids may be in KY :)
Last update on November 17, 9:26 am by Sachin Gupta.
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I know you are probably excited about inter-state adoptions, but I would not make that your focus of attention. Right now you need to get licensed.
When we were first licensed I also checked out the online listings for kids in other states. My CW/LW said they liked to see their families have some experience with actually having a foster kid before sending out their file for potential adoptions from listings. Why? Because the kids listed often have issues that new families may not be ready to handle. Not saying we couldn't. They were wanting to make sure permanency happens, not a family thinking all fluffy clouds then having to disrupt due to a thunderstorm.
I would license with Indiana, do as KY suggested and if you are interested in other kids, then send out your file. As for which is best, none of us have crystal balls. I would go with your instinct.
If your area is like the one my family is in, the need for foster parents is great. It shouldn't take too long before they call with a placement. It sounds like it is if the office is swamped.
Thanks for your help!
I was just hesitant to go through our state's (Indiana) process if that would preclude us from adopting from other states and we would have to get a home study through a private agency on top of it.
I don't know if it makes a difference, but we will be "adopt only" and are not doing "foster to adopt."
I'm not sure how to advise you, but I'll share our experience. We were licensed for foster care and had our home study sent out many times for out of state kids. It turns out that our homestudy was totally inadequate. We also had a really hard time getting our sw to do anything we needed. I know they are busy...
We ended up getting a private homestudy and using Adopt America Network (AAN) to send out our homestudy. I highly recommend using AAN no matter where you get your homestudy from. They were wonderful to work with and do it at no charge.
Now that we are finalized, I can say that I don't think we would have ever been matched if we had stuck with DSS. However, an interstate adoption is painful and was only made more so with a third agency involved. It definitely created some bumps in the road, BUT I don't know when or how we would have finalized working with DSS. They thought they had the "whole ball" and never mentioned anything but monthly visits. Meanwhile, our private agency was filing the papers with the court. I can't imagine how painful the process would have been without the private agency.
For whatever it's worth, that's our experience.
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Based on my experience getting licensed first by the state and then transferring to a private agency, I would say go private.
Also to clarify, if you are adopting from the foster care system, technically you will be fostering-to-adopt. Even if you only accept legally free and are intending to adopt. Until the adoption is finalized, you will be fostering(a pre-adoptive placement). So first you need to get your foster training/license, then your home study so you can be approved as an adoptive placement.
The main this is to get started. Find the next available training class and get to work. Licensing is a long process.
I am also new here and currently in training to adopt a legally free older child from the foster system in Alabama. In my state, you have the option to choose foster or adopt. I am not getting certified to foster. I don't have to have CPR or some of the other foster care training.
I am going through a non-profit agency that only deals with adoption from foster care and they will do our home study in a few weeks. I asked our social worker if we can use our home study to adopt out of state. She said that in Alabama, they generally want you to try to adopt in-state for a year before they'll support sending the app to case workers in other states. This isn't really surprising because the agency is partially state funded.
I guess my point is to find out everything you can about your state's system. Private home studies are expensive but may be the best way to go for you. Plus, we're looking into older children. I was told that the only way to get a younger child from a state system (younger than 8) is to accept a sibling group, or to foster and hope the child becomes legally free for adoption.
Initially, we went through the state to become approved as adopt only. The state ended up subcontracting out the adopt only home study to an LCPA. The LCPA couldn't release the home study to us because it was DCS property and would not send it out-of-state on our behalf for the same reason. We were able to, with DCS permission, purchase the home study from the LCPA for personal use so we could submit on children out-of-state (I did get the impression that this isn't typical). However, we have had very little luck with submitting on out-of-state kiddos (through AFFEC, Adoption Photolisting, various Heart Galleries), typically never hearing back - though we did have two match meetings for Ohio based children. After being approved as adopt only, we became licensed foster parents upon realizing the profiles for legal risk kids that we were being sent more commonly described children we felt better suited to parent (as opposed to the profiles of children who are legally free in our state). The foster care licensing involved a bit more education and another home visit. We had to get special approval to be able to use our adopt only home study for our foster care license. We have been pretty much exclusively been submitting for legal risk kiddos in our state as of late and have stopped looking out-of-state.Are you in Indiana? If so, I would reach out to the foster care specialist in your region via e-mail or phone (should be available on DCS' website).
Last update on November 17, 9:26 am by Sachin Gupta.
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