Question for the group. Has anyone here adopted a child before. If so. How was the process, cost, is there any support u get after.
Just curious because i see many liberals attacking adoption and feel its a good time to analyze and fix this process and it starts with being aware of how it currently fuctions.
I was adopted in th 70's..can't help you with the questions, but I am living proof that kids that cannot speak prefer to live instead of being aborted..
Well I'm glad u weren't aborted as well. Wow so sad to think about. So I'm mainly just trying to dig to see how corrupt the whole process is. I feel it's an expensive process and the money you pay isnt actually going to the kid. Its going to agencies and people that arent gonna raise the kid. I feel fixing this system is a huge step in the right direction to ensure pro life moving forward
It seems that they regulate it so much, make it so very expensive, and difficult that it puts it out of reach for so many that want to adopt..good luck in your quest...God Bless
Yes I agree. I understand ensuring the baby goes to a good home. However wealth and fame dont equal good home. It seems so hard for average people to adopt. Plus it cost so much money to do it and that money doesnt even go to the kid. God bless u to. Thanks for sharing your testimony and glad you are here with u 😁
Thank you..I believe the difficulty and cost of it are all by design to push the abortion narrative..(or as some say "(((their))) religious right")..I will leave it there..these people are truly Satanic
Yes I agree 100% and yes they truly are very satanic. So sad to think about how far they have fallen and the evils they will do. All for something temporary
Agreed..good luck
God bless u fren. Much love
God bless you, patriot fren! The drummer in my band has been blind from birth. He is a phenomenal musician and a good friend. Thank God that neither of you were aborted!
Thank you and God bless you..when women say I can't speak on the topic, because I am a man, I laugh and say I have more to say than women..because I speak for the tens of millions that didn't have the opportunity to speak..much love.
We tried from 2008 to 2014. You have to meet physicians, shrinks, social workers, and then there are obligatory courses… in Switzerland you have to choose a country from where you are rescuing a kid. We chose Vietnam and it took them 3 years to admit we had no chance to get a toddler within the next 3 years, so we switched to Thailand but it was as slow. My health began to deteriorate (autoimmune problems and chronic fatigue) and we ended the project after 5 years because we had to reissue our authorizations again (shrink, etc.) and it already costed us a lot.🥺
This is great testimony to the corruption of the system. Wow 5 years plus u paid money and still nothing. If you dont mind sharing, would u tell us about how much u invested to just get told no.
I am truly sorry that the evils of the world kept u from adopting. From your post and comments here I can tell u have a big heart and would raise a child with love.
We spent around 3 to 5K (Swiss Francs). They even demanded we get some documents professionally translated (100,- / page).
When I see all I learnt during the lock down: finding my inner peace, beginning piano, recording metal songs, learning 3D printing and modular synthesis, Droning around in the hills, growing yeast and using it to cook bread… I guess I’d have sensational family activities during the rainy days.
But then, I grew fonder and fonder my surrogate family: TGAW.🙏🏻
Awe we are glad u are here with us. We are very fond of u as well. We all got an adopted family here on GAW.
I know God has a plan in all this fren. Sorry the system shot u down. 3-5 wow that's crazy. All to just be told no. We definitely need to re do the whole system in place.
Is there anything you noticed that you thibk should be done away with or done differently. Obviously we gotta vet people. So how do we balance it
First, you should not be obliged to focus on a single country. Any country should do and there should be a efficient network of agencies to help place the kids and ensure they are well. Also, every test should be performed twice by different specialists to ensure there’s no bias. A couple we knew were also being delayed because they had tats. The guy was in the Swiss army and had a really nice culture and sensibility, for God’s sake!
Yes I agree. Kinda messed up that a tat makes u unqualified. It is very weird that they make u pick a specific place. Your right it shouldnt just be pick a place and we will get you a kid
We adopted a sibling group of four from foster care seven years ago (started fostering them 10 years ago now). Well, we adopted three of them then, actually. To adopt the fourth, we had to wait until he was 18, but that's another story.
We couldn't bear the thought of adopting from other countries when there were so many kids in need of permanency locally. The foster care system is overrun with cases, short on caseworkers, and being a government-run system, is rather inept. Our kids were blessed with a gem of a caseworker, thankfully.
As far as cost, you must pay for a home study, which might amount to $1000 or so, but may not be that much, even. Foster kiddos come with a per diem reimbursement while they are in your home. When you adopt from foster care, you also negotiate an amount from the state and/or fed that you'll receive each month until they're 18. Beyond that, through foster care, attorney's fees for the adoption are covered, though many families incur fees when they have to fight the system itself along the way. That fourth adopted kid of ours was costly (and worth every penny). To sum up, there are some out-of-pocket expenses, but we were surprised about how much assistance was provided.
Of note, some friends were walking through the process recently and stopped in their tracks when they were asked to provide pics of all their weapons. I let them know (and verified) that this is NOT listed in the policies. Our foster care specialist never flinched about us owning weapons; she just wanted to insure they were stored "properly." And certainly we would not have complied with pics.
I'd be happy to answer any questions you have. Fostering/adopting is not for the faint of heart. The system is broken and working with the government is unpleasant. Ultimately, though, the ones who REALLY don't want to be there are the kids whose only way to permanency are loving parents.
Wow first off I just wanna say good on you for doing what u did. U helped change 4 lives and for that I just wanna say thank you and God bless.
So your testimony is slightly different than what others have said. So correct me if I'm wrong, your main struggle was just all the red tape and hoops u had to jump through. Not so much financial trouble. So there are ways to get support?
You say it's broken. So having been through the process as much as u have, what would u change, add or remove to make it a better system
There are two ways I can think of to improve the system vastly. 1) Every Christian who claims they would like to adopt, DOES IT. 2) Flood the system with Christian employees, from caseworkers through supervisory positions.
And you are correct. We didn't find the cost to be prohibitive at all, despite living on one income. Aside from a reimbursement amount per day, foster kids are supposed to have access to a bit of clothing assistance, too. In our area, there's even a clothing bank for foster kids. And kids who are young enough receive WIC, as well. There was a point when three of my four qualified, so I'd be THAT mom in the store check out, wrangling kids and getting her free beans, milk, and juice. When comments were made, I just learned to use that time to educate others on foster care. Most people are simply ignorant of how it works.
One of the most frustrating pieces of it for us is that foster children must be enrolled in a public or private school. As a homeschooling family, that was time poorly spent for our fostered kiddos, plus it was an additional government system for us to navigate. Once they were adopted, homeschooling helped provide some much-needed healing for them.
I love this thought my fren. Yes Christian's need to come together and start taking back some of these corrupt systems. Not because we are perfect ourselves, rather so God is part of the system.
This is interesting. Something I haven't really heard before. Thanks for sharing your testimony and educating me. I did know there are systems of help just wasnt sure how easy or accessible they are. Good on you for not taking in the negative from people, rather u used that time to help educate people. Great work.
I also did not know that about foster care. Of course they want the kids in the school system. Makes sense they would require it. Dont agree with it though. Learned alot about home school the past year and half. Lots of great people here that can speak on the topic. Learned so much I didnt know.
Spelling out the word 'you' is an adult thing to do. It's two extra letters.
You are correct it's only 2 more letters. Dont really feel it's an adult thing but we can move past that. You know if u took a little time and engraged in the post discussion or said something other than a correction, you might get better results. Just a thought. God bless u. I will work on it just for you though 👍✌🙏😁❤
We adopted a young child in 2019. It took three years to complete the adoption due to the child being in the care of Child Protective Services.
After 3 years, three thorough background checks (whole life story), financial checks, fingerprints and 4 questionnaires, house calls (them showing up at anytime they chose), scheduled Psycholgists and Doctor visits and forced medications for what they called ADHD that wasn't prevalent, and $1000 for court fees, we finally won. I use the term won because It felt like an uphill battle for three years to get the adoption finalized. They want to keep as many kids in their custody as possible.
When I say they want to keep the kids in their 'system' it is an understatement. To them it's all about the money. To us it was about love. Best thing we ever did. Our child is God fearing, healthy, intelligent and unmedicated and unvaxsinated. If i could I would take them all in. ❤️
Aww you have a good heart fren. Thank you for taking on thats up hill battle. Even just helping change 1 child's life is a huge win.
Yes I dont doubt that it's all about the money. Some of the things they do seem to make sense in short term but really just add red tape in the long run. I'm not sure how to balance it. Do u have any ideas how to improve or change things. What can we get rid of or improve
Get rid of Child Protective Services, back to church or village run orphanages is a start. "It takes a village to raise a child."
I agree this is a great start. I think stuff like this should be one of our main focuses. If we dont even protect the children and give them a safe loving home, then what are we doing as a planet.
I'm only an observer. Long, long ago, like 70 years, it seems to me that adoption must have been easier, both formally and informally, because I knew adopted kids, I remember big established orphanages, people talked about doing it like it wasn't the struggle u/penisse described, I had an adopted relative or two. I know one thing that would happen was that doctors (and these are GPs) and attorneys would hook up expectant unwed mothers with prospective parents. No doubt money changed hands and there was a lot of personal bias involved. You can imagine how this could cover for trafficking or lead to unfortunate matches. For instance, I remember an adopted girl in grade school, about 8, and her parents were quite old. My parents thought it would ultimately be bad for her as they would be dead or need care when she was reaching adulthood. She was also massively spoiled.
Anyway, this system got a lot of children adopted into families. I don't remember foster care other than orphanages. But the lack of standardization and screening led to reforms, which led to the bureaucratic monstrosity of today.
This was very well put. Thanks. So how do we balance things so they dont go in either extreme
No idea, but we may be back to this surplus of unwanted babies and should think about it. Orphanages are not necessarily bad, certainly more stable than foster care. Otherwise it seems to me that the old system worked with larger, tight families, where often someone's little mistake could be adopted by an aunt or cousin, perhaps totally bypassing a legal process. Also, in the past doctors and attorneys, who are going to be necessary to an overall solution, were not cogs in a group process, they were confidants and ombudsmen. Possibly more morally directed. To protect the children, we need to identify the ones that will hurt them. The wokesters now are concerned with cultural matches and stuff that is less pressing.
but we may be back to this surplus of unwanted babies and should think about it.....<<<this was part of the reason I made this post. Definitely something we all need to come together on and figure out.
Ok this might be a dumb question. What's the difference between foster care and orphanages. I guess I'm not informed enough because I thought they were the same thing just different name
I agree identifying the evil ones is a huge step we need to take.
Orphanages are stick and brick, permanent homes for children, like Boys Town. The one I remember was run by nuns and was a large collection of beautiful brick buildings on several acres of well-landscaped land. They have sometimes been horrific centers of abuse, like some in Ireland where illegitimate children are scorned and nuns deliberately killed children. Before that, there were workhouses as in Oliver Twist. They did need oversight. The better ones have small "homes" in the whole collective, where a group can develop cohesion and history, and also where abuse can more easily be spotted.
Foster care is parcelling out children or adults to caregivers, usually in a home setting. Fewer children. The smaller numbers and home setting are the pluses. Otherwise, the government is running it with all the problems that come with bureaucracy and there is no guarantee for the clients that they will stay. They get shuffled around a lot, some of them. Sometimes it is because they are just very hard to care for, and many develop emotional and behavior problems. Sometimes it is the whim of case workers. Many in foster care have parents and were taken from them by CPS, so there is an associated legal battle. I might add that adopted children also sometimes are rejected by their adoptive parents and get shuffled back into foster care or readopted. Truly, I think this is worse than less-than-perfect parents and that virtue signaling by both would-be parents and caseworker contributes to it happening.
You've got lots of answers here talking about how expensive it is, I assume they live in Blue states and countries. In my decidedly purple state, home studies are necessary but dont cost anything. The background checks are pretty surface level and even convicted felons pass mustard. You have to take a class over 5 weeks, but again, this is free, and often even encouraged with benefits or even cash, to attend. Lawyers arent necessary unless you want them, most adoptions go through without an attorney for the adopting family because DSS is your lawyer and trying to get the kids adopted, not fighting against you to do so.
All this isnt arm chair quarterbacking. My wife has been an adoptions officer for 5 years for the state and 1 year private, having been a social worker since she left college and navigating to the adoptions position she wanted.
So my real advice isnt to try to contradict the other good posts here, but to call your local social services, and ask to speak to the adoptions worker herself, not the front desk and not case managers or investigators, but the adoptions worker. She will know if the local judges are pro/con adoption, what it takes in your area specifically, and all that jazz. And probably be very enthusiastic to have a prospective adopter.
^^^This. Training is required, but free. Maintaining a first aid cert is required, but paid for. Reimbursements for many of the things you have to purchase are available. Attorneys who work to process adoptions often do so for only the amount reimbursed by the state.
I've never understood the cost complaint when it comes to foster-to-adopt.
My family adopted 3 foster kids. (One was a foster newborn) In our case there was no cost in the actual adoption. They were with us for 3 years before the adoption. As a foster parent we did get paid. If I remember correctly we got 7 dollars a day per kid. .. We were living large. Going out just about every night. Even when we didn't fell like it. It was awesome. ..
Of course we were going out to buy baby food, diapers, runs to the doctors. When we weren't going out we had little kids crying with nightmares.
Of course I am just messing around here. The doctor bills were covered so that was not a concern for us. The 7 dollars a day (I don't really remember that exact number it wasn't the reason we were foster parents).
The money we got was for food, diapers, clothes, things like that. I know the funds did not cover the cost but it was a help.
To be honest with you I think that maybe people should not be given any money to take care of foster kids. Medical care should be covered but everything else should be paid for by the foster parents. Maybe that is an area where churches should step in.
Why am I saying that? Because I have seen what some foster parents were doing. It was not good. What some of these people would do for just a few dollars a day would break your heart.
We only meet the foster care case worker once a year or so. I think we were supposed to meet once a month.
The reality was this. Those case workers were overwhelmed with cases. We were not a problem for them so they only came by when they needed something at the end of each year. The kids would have visits with their parents. Most of the time we drove the kids to the meeting. The foster care system would offer to pick up the kids but some random driver would pick them up. Those kids were already messed up. They did not need more strangers in their lives.
I can tell you this. When you hear about a case worker that is accused of overlooked a problem take a look at their case load.
It is like the system overwhelms people. If they try to do the job right because they care about the kids they can't get it done. If they don't care about the kids they have an easy job.
It's no wonder so many kids get lost in the foster care system.
My neice was adopted in 2020. It was a long, expensive, drug out process. Her parents are both employed, one as LEO. They have all kinds of checks on the house, the LEO had to remove all guns from house including his issued weapons.
Its pretty crazy. Had to do fundraisers because of expense.
Took years. Worth it for the outcome as she's a winner of a neice but its not for the faint of heart or middle class families of moderate to limited means.
I should note they really wanted a baby so that added to it. I think if they adopted a 10 year old it would have been faster.
Abortoids fear adoption because it is a solution to a problem they don't want solved.
If you stop subsidising abortion you'd probably stop 90% of it. I'm pulling numbers out of my ass, but there's probably 10% of the population that want kids but can't have them for whatever reason (infertile, left it too late, genetic conditions, parents brainwashed you into chopping your dick off at 7 years old, etc). That sounds like a market opportunity to me. If the system allowed for paid surrogacy to incentivise abortoids to keep the pregnancy going until delivery you'd probably save that last 10% of babies. Wouldn't even have to make abortion illegal.
This is a good idea. One worry though. How do we prevent things from swinging in the opposite direction to where people are having kids just to get the money for getting rid of them. Would we regulate the amount of times u can do it. Or am I not understanding something right
That's a good question.
Short answer: I don't know.
Long answer: I'd hesitate to invite government regulation because that ruins everything. You'd probably want it to be just enough money to incentivise continuing the pregnancy, but not enough to want to do it all the time. But to be honest I'm not sure people making a career out of it would be a bad thing. If there is a market demand I don't see anything wrong with being a professional womb. If people are buying it's a win-win. The problem is when the state gets involved and starts handing out ludicrous amounts of money and ignoring any market dynamics; thus creating wards of the state. I imagine supply and demand would go a long way to regulate the price.
I suppose we also have to think about it from a buyers perspective. What would I want? I'd want a trusted third party managing it (surrogacy business). I would want regular drug and health screening. I'd want genetic screening. I'd want the price to reflect the surrogates commitment to a clean bill of health, etc. I think this would go a long way to making it painful enough for most people to not want to make a career out of it, but enough of a fall back if you had an oopsie moment.
I also think health insurance could help here. I don't know about most people but I'd like a policy that gave me the option to get paid out to continue a pregnancy if I was raped. Sounds a bit full on, but insurance for trauma is never nice to think about.
On a side note the rape argument has always confused me. Abortion is still immoral when a person is raped, but the moral responsibility lies with the rapist. If abortion is chosen then the rapist is responsible for the murder, not the mother or doctor. I think states that make it illegal have exceptions for rape anyway.
Had a friend try to adopt. It's very expensive, lots of scams and after spending 50000 dollars you are not guaranteed to be able to adopt or receive any money back.
The MANY problems with the adoption system are simple to fix by doing one thing....
It is not the role of government, it's the role of the church.
Take government control out of adoption and you remove tens of thousands of dollars and months of red tape.
I adopted 2 kids in 2000 whose mother had died in childbirth with the younger. They were (are) tricky to raise. Still not independent. (Not an environmental issue, I assure you...genetics. i raised them the same way I raised my two birth kids, with just as much love, attention, patience, and structure.)
So, both of the adopted kids made mostly destructive choices as teenagers (doing much better at 24 and 26 years old, finally). As a result of the choices ny adopted daughter made, I ended up adopting the first born of one of those kids in 2015. She is 8 now.
The 2nd time I adopted, in 2015, it cost $2200, using a lawyer (in Mossouri). The paperwork was a pain, but easy. Getting home visits from a social worker three times was part of the process. That was also easy, but annoying to have to be analyzed.
The court day events were easy. Our new one-year old actually starting clapping at the exact moment the judge announced the adoption as being approved. 😆 Then the judge and all the audience clapped along with her. What a leader she was, even as a one-year old! 😃 ❤️