Parents who adopt their children are used to judgmental questions. One of the most popular: “Why don’t you adopt a child out of foster care? Those kids need homes, too.”
For everyone who has ever asked that question or wondered about it, I’ll share my experience, and the experience of my friend, Sheila.
Here’s what happened to me:
I wanted a baby. I wanted to rock my baby to sleep and hear my baby’s first words. So I wanted to adopt a baby, not a school-age child. I first tried international adoption. That became a morass, so my husband and I turned to domestic. We hired an attorney, and we checked out adopting from foster care.
Years ago, my colleague adopted a baby from foster care, so I knew it was possible. I called our local foster care office, but I could not get even basic questions answered. I was transferred to several agencies and each person ratcheted up the age of the youngest child I could hope to be matched with. I was first told I might get a seven-year-old; then I was told, no, an eight-year-old was probably the youngest. The last woman I spoke with said no way would I get a child that young. “Ten years old is about the youngest we see,” she said. She explained that the goal was to reunite kids in foster care with their mothers or other relatives, and children were only available for adoption after every attempt at reunification failed.
A friend forwarded me a flier about a foster-to-adopt information session in a neighboring county.
When we arrived, there were tables set up with photos of school-age children, presumably available for adoption. Most appeared at least ten years old. They were smiling in their school portraits. The sparse crowd of about twenty gathered to hear a panel of speakers.
The first speaker was head of foster care in that county. She said parents looking to adopt should not be working through foster care. “We’re a child protection agency,” she said. “If you want to adopt, there are private agencies that can help you with that.”
