How to Adopt

Thinking about adopting?

In the United States, there are four steps that a couple or interested parties would have to follow in order to adopt a child, or children for that matter.

1. Obtain from birth parents the legal consent. This could be done through court termination of parental rights. Although there are some states that have laws that actually allow licensed agencies to do this part. They give these agencies the right to take the consent from the birth parents. And this is processed through an administrative procedure.

Important thing to remember: Before such a consent is done, birth parents should be well informed of their rights. They should also have full knowledge of what they are actually doing.

2. Preparation and assessment of the adoptive parents. This process is called the home study or adoption study. What happens in this stage is that the licensed agency or the licensed adoption social worker would actually assess whether a person or a household is actually able to be a parent to the child. They should be emotionally, financially, and physically able to do the responsibilities of being a parent. Assessed are the adopting parents’ stability, maturity, physical health, mental health, quality of their relationship with other people and within themselves, values, beliefs, and the kind of parenting that they received as children.

3. Transfer of background information from the birth parents to the adoptive parents. This information includes the important and relevant medical history, social history as well as genetic history. These are vital pieces of information for when the child grows up and matures, these are actually needed by the child and it is part of their legal rights to acquire such information. For most states, these pieces of information are required to be transferred and given in written form.

4. Provision of supportive, or follow up, services after the child has started to live in the new house. However, it should also be prior to the legal adoption. This is period that ranges and varies from three months to a whole year. Evaluation of the child’s adjustment is included in this stage. This is later on used as the basis of the final recommendation if the adoption would be made legal.