Daddy, Papa and Me

I know I haven’t blogged much, if any, about our second adoption process. We started it nearly 4 years ago, had to take a break and then retrained last year. We’ve been in the matching process for a year now.

This is a public ‘fostadopt’ program. The children are those in foster care, but they are in ‘concurrent’ planning (adoption is another avenue possibility because reunification has a low chance) or are legally unattached to their birth parents. The process for the adoptive parents:

1. Training (2-4 months)
2. Paperwork and Homestudy (2-4 months), when done…
3. Matching (parents look at prospective children, choose possibilities, social workers for parents and children decide if they might be good matches). (1 day to years). If there is a match…
4. Disclosure. A meeting between parents, all concerned social workers, others to look over all the history, issues and paperwork for the child. Parents then decide if they are interested and instigate..
5. Meetings. Parents meet child/ren in several meetings of increasing duration and seriousness (1st meeting might be short, without other children, later meetings can be overnights and potential siblings meet prospective adoptee). (couple weeks to couple months) At any point, any party can change their mind, but if decided it’s a good match then..
6. Fostercare. Child/ren enter home of adoptive parents as foster children. Adoption proceeding commence, court hearings, birth parents (if in the picture) might have continued possible contact, reunification might still be a possibility (with varying levels of possibility to not-at-all to a slim chance). (about 6 months to 1year+) After hearings and paperwork..
7. Adoption.

We have reached step 4…

I haven’t written much because the privacy of the children is paramount. I can’t really say much about the children, it’s not fair to them or their families. And frankly, it’s been emotionally draining.

At first it was only frustrating. We said we wanted to consider girls between 2 and 6, though we’d be open to boys that age… and maybe, just maybe.. an older child. We said no Anglo/Caucasian children, only because it would not be fair to Emma to make her family all white. We said a girl because of practical (can share a room, clothes, etc), emotional (Emma wants a sister) and other reasons, but would consider a girl. We said younger because Emma does very well with younger children and we think the dynamics would work best.

We indicated our interest in a few children, but then only to learn that a) they were already placed or b) there was some issue we couldn’t handle. There just hasn’t many girls under 6. Lots of boys, lots of children older.

This summer we matched with an older child. We had a disclosure meeting, but after a couple months of trying to get more information, discussions and consultations (thank you to several people there!), we reluctantly decided we couldn’t do it. There were too many issues we couldn’t handle with an older child.

Then last week, we put our name in for a younger child. But, after finding out health issue specifics, we realized there was no way we could, or Emma, handle them. I won’t say the location, gender, age or exactly what the issue was, but I can say the child was younger than Emma and had an organ transplant as a infant. The survival rate of 70% after 5 years. Not only that, but the drugs cost over 100k a year. Yes, that’s 100,000 dollars. The state covers health care costs till 18, even after adoption, but these drugs will be lifelong. We have no idea how this child, or any child, will manage?  What insurance company will _ever_ insure the child with such a pre-existing condition that will assuredly cost tens of thousands a year?

It broke our heart to consider this, and we pray that a family will take her in. It broke our heart even more to say no. But we had too. We just couldn’t do it emotionally and otherwise, for our sake and especially Emma’s.

The excruciating aspect of this process is getting your heart into the possibility and then having cold reality blast your face. Looking through the profiles of children, children who desperately need loving homes, who have emotional or physical needs that could be helped with a loving family, and passing them by is hard enough.

But then to match with or learn in detail about a child and say no. It can’t but make you feel like a heartless, cruel human. God, you just hope someone will welcome that child home. It just won’t be your home.

We have our daughter to consider foremost, her physical and emotional well-being. And our own, and our financial abilities.

Well, we’ve indicated our interest an another younger child, and a set of 2 younger siblings.

We’ll see.

Perhaps you might have a loving home for a child (that’s California, most states have something similar)? If you are in the SF Bay area, try Family Builders.

Tags: Adoption, adoption process, children, foster care, Parenting

This entry was posted by Trey on Friday, October 23rd, 2009 at 1:54 pm and is filed under Adoption, Parenting. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.