The Adoption Process

Many people that are not familiar with the adoption process have many questions. What exactly do you have to do to adopt a child? This blog post is dedicated to give a general outline of what exactly the adoption process consists of. If you have any questions that I have failed to answer, please leave a comment below in the comment section or e-mail me, and I will answer them in an updated post. Please send me any questions you may have!

Step 1: You have decided to adopt! Some families already know the country that they want to adopt from, and some, like us, choose to adopt first and then decide on the country. Your first step is to decide which country you want to adopt from because the paperwork for each country is very different. To find out each country's adoption requirements, visit this website. It is regularly updated with information from each country and their adoption policies/procedures.

Step 2: Decide on an agency that you would like to use to help you with the process of adopting your child. Every agency has its own policies and procedures REGARDLESS of the country's policies and procedures, so you have to find an agency that works for you. It is probably easier to sign a contract with an agency that is in your local area, but sometimes that is not an option and you have to go with an out-of-state agency like we did. Our agency is actually based out of Portland, Oregon.

Steps 3 & 4: After you have decided on an agency, they will send you lots of paperwork to fill out and a list of documents that you need to gather, complete, send off for, etc. Here is a list of many of the documents that you will need:

- Letter to the orphanage
- Financial information
- State criminal clearance
- Letters of reference
- Letters from employer
- Medical forms
- Marriage certificate
- Birth certificate
- Power of attorney
- Passport photo sets
- Family pictures
- Home study report

A home study report is the report that a social worker completes after visiting your home and speaking with you about why you want to adopt, how you would care for a child, etc. This can be done through your adoption agency or through another agency. Alex and I have to use a local agency since obviously, a social worker isn't going to fly to see us from Oregon. :)

All of the documents above need to be notarized, state certified and then sent to Washington D.C. to be authenticated by the US Department of State and the consulate of whatever country you are adopting from. This can be very expensive, since each document costs about $5 to be state certified and $8 to be authenticated. The list of documents I gave above is not even all the documents required to make up your Dossier. Your Dossier is the complete set of all the documents required by your country.

Step 5: Mail your completed Dossier to the country you are adopting from to be translated into their language. Sometimes it is easy to forget that the people receiving your documents do not speak the same language as you. Translating these documents also comes with a fee.

Step 6: If the courts in your country accept your Dossier and find you qualified to adopt from their country, you will most likely be put on a waiting list for a referral. A referral is when they match you with a specific child that is available to be adopted. They will contact you with a referral once they have matched you with a child and you have a certain amount of time to look at a picture of the child and whatever information they have on that child to decide if your family would be a fit. The wait time for a referral can be anywhere from a few weeks to a few years, depending on the country, the sex of the child, the age of the child, availability of children, etc. There is no guaranteed time frame and many couples that we have talked to say that this waiting period is one of the toughest parts of the adoption process, before that child arrives to their new family.

Step 7: The next step is to travel to that country to meet your child and finalize the adoption. Some countries only require that you travel once, others you have to travel to multiple times. Some countries only require you to stay there a few days while others require you to stay a few months. All of that information can be found by clicking the link I posted above.

Obviously this is not everything that goes into adopting a child. There are parenting classes that you have to take, especially ones that teach you how to deal with many of the emotions that children being adopted are feeling and going through. There is trying to attach to your child and bond with them, and letting them know that you are not going to ever leave them. Adoption is a complicated and hard process but I believe that every child deserves a family that loves them. Alex and I aren't even that far into the process, but we ask for you to pray for us as we spend time praying for our future daughter and preparing our hearts and home for her arrival someday. As I spent this evening writing a letter to her orphanage, I couldn't help but be excited that God called us to this and has been working to prepare us for this (and future) moments for the past 23, 24 years. His plans are not our plans but we are willing to let our plans be His plans.