Adoption: Where Do I Start?: Step 5: Engage in the Placement Process

This information was taken directly from Child Welfare Information Gateway

Step 5: Engage in the Placement Process

What You Should Know

Once your home study is completed, you are ready to begin the placement process—the time when a specific child is identified for your family. Depending on the type of adoption you are pursuing, the characteristics of the child or children you are seeking, and a variety of other factors, this process and the time involved in waiting for your child can vary greatly.

If you are pursuing a foster care adoption, you may review information about a number of children who are waiting for families. Your agency may have adoption events, a photolisting service, TV or video segments describing waiting children, or other ways to let you know about available children waiting for families. You can also view waiting children at the national photolisting website: http://www.adoptuskids.org. You will often have the opportunity for preplacement visits to get to know a child before he or she moves into your home. Your family may also be able to serve as a resource, foster, or concurrent planning family, working with the agency to support the child’s return to his or her birth family as well as being considered as a potential permanent family for the child if reunification does not occur.

If you are pursuing adoption through a licensed private agency, the expectant parents may select your family from among several prospective adoptive families.

If you are pursuing an independent adoption, an attorney or facilitator may help you identify expectant parents, or you may locate them on your own if allowed by State law.

If you are pursuing intercountry adoption, you may review information about your prospective child and may have the opportunity to meet your child in his or her placement setting (foster home or orphanage).

Some Places to Go

Information Gateway’s Obtaining Background Information on Your Prospective Adoptive Child provides suggestions for obtaining a child’s medical, social, and educational history: http://www.childwelfare.gov/pubs/f_background.cfm

Foster Parents Considering Adoption, also from Information Gateway, outlines considerations in this type of adoption: http://www.childwelfare.gov/pubs/f_fospar.cfm

Information Gateway’s Intercountry Adoption: Where Do I Start? provides more information on the placement process when adopting a child from another country: http://www.childwelfare.gov/pubs/f_inter

Use of Advertising and Facilitators in Adoptive Placements provides summaries of State laws regulating the use of advertising and facilitators in private placements: http://www.childwelfare.gov/systemwide/laws_policies/statutes/advertisingall.pdf

Continue to Adoption: Where Do I Start?: Step 6: File Necessary Legal Documents

Resource

Child Welfare Information Gateway. Available online at http://www.childwelfare.gov/pubs/f_start.cfm