biracial infant adoption on a budget

Originally Posted By Beth HallLike you we are often amazed at the fees that some agencies charge for their services. Unfortunately adoption is not just a life long process but also a business to some. An uncomfortable reality, when children and $$ are mixed. Services do need to be paid for but you can ask questions about what services are provided at what cost, and whether the entity is a non-profit etc. Private agencies are not reimbursed for recruiting families or placing children the way that state agencies are, this means they often must charge fees to offset their costs. In our case, much of our fees charged to adoptive parents go to the work we do with many birth families who are considering adoption but do not pay any fee for services. You are entitled to know what any agency or individual you work with thinks about these issues and since you will be working with them in one of the most important moments of your lives (becoming parents) I would urge you to trust your instincts.I would be happy to give you information about our program, because as you say, we are always looking for same race parents to adoption infants of color. We do have a sliding scale and our fees range from $1500 to $3000. There are other fees involved as well, including travel and legal and you will have to have a home study completed by a licensed social worker or agency in Washington, but perhaps we can help you design an affordable adoption and we can certainly give you some referrals and references in your state. If you privately email your snail mail address I would be happy to send you some materials or you can give us a call at (415) 221-6957. Good luck, Beth

Originally Posted By betty newsonI am writing to inquire about information on adopting a mixed race infant or young child. My daughter and her husband are not able to have children of their own. She is caucasian, he is African-American, Caucasian and Japanese. They would be wonderful parents and really want to pursue adoption. She is a Social Worker with a private lonf-term foster care agency, and he is an Order Picker with a grocey distribution company. They live with his grandparents. Grandpa is African-American and Grandma is Japanese. My son-in-law was adopted by his grandparents when he was two. He has a very culturally diverse family. My own son is mixed. My daughter has lived all of her life among other cultures, including people with disabilities. They really want to have a baby or child to call their own son or daughter. Please send any info you have about the "how-tos" of adopting mixed race children. Thanks, Betty

I need some information on adopting a child of different race,by parents of a different race. Like a white couple adopting a black child. I need information going for it and against it..

Hi are you still on this board?

My husband and I would like to adopt a biracial infant. I am black and he is caucasian After some research, I admit to being turned off by the cost involved - it almost feels as if we are purchasing a baby. Not only that, but most people, unless independantly wealthy, does not have thousands of dollars on hand. We live in Florida. I am a PhD student and my husband himself is working on his graduate degree. We have a nice home, a good life and love in our heart for a child. Can anyone recommend an agency to us that would assist us in adopting a biracial baby girl for less that $3000.00? We do not mind assisting the birthmom with hospital bills but coming up with such a huge lumpsum is not doable for us. Thank you and God Bless all of you for opening your hearts to children.

I wish you well in your search, we live in New Zealand where mixed race families are not a big deal, so it wasn't a problem for us to adopt a child who is a different colour to us. We did have to be checked out and 'rubber stamped' by a social worker of the same race as our child, even though I have the same racial mix as our child, she is darker than me therefore our adoption was treated as transracial. We were very blessed that the fees were not too bad, (less than $4000.00 NZD) But when you compare that to the cost of raising a child, or adopting overseas, it is a 'drop in the bucket' really. Our baby is just a delight to us as parents and her older siblings just love her. We wouldn't be without her. I had heard that some states in the USA have adoption tax breaks of up to $10,000.00. I don't know how this works or which states this applies to.

if you look at the poll on the General Adoptive Parents Support, you'll see that most adoptions are under 15000, and a good number of them are under $10,000. Yes there is an adoptive tax credit (over 10,500 this year), but that doesn't apply til your adoption is finalized. in our case we adopted dd in july 04 but are only able to file for the tax credit this year (she was finalized nov 05). so you may end up having to get a loan. here's what we did: we scrimped and saved and waited a couple of years so we had all the cash. this was great and allowed us to not worry about the financial aspect. in most cases moms are eligible for medicaid or other support, so we only had to pay hospital copay of about 250 dollars. you can tell your agency that you're only interested in adoptions that involve no or under $500 pbmom support costs. having gone to gradschool I can say that having a kid while in school can be good (good med benefits) but it's also very hard. I wish you luck, Lisa

That is good to know you can get tax breaks. You can't get that in NZ. I wish you all well. And congrats on your adoption Lisa. I wish you blessings with number two! Another difference between USA and NZ is that by law you can't give the birth parents any money for medical or any other expenses, however it is common practice in NZ for the adoptive family to pay the birth mother and father's legal fees. You have to be very careful the way this is done as you can loose the child if someone accuses you of 'paying for the baby'.

We were a CC family until we adopted our AA daughter. We pais 12,000 and that included ALL b-mom expenses. If b-mom changed her mind we lost nothing, the agency picks up her tab and all our money rolls over to the next baby.