Decision to Adopt

In December our foster care social worker brought up adoption and asked if we would be interested. I told her it was not the reason we’d decided to do foster care and didn’t feel like it was a financial possibility. That’s when we first learned about Adoption Assistance Program, Title IV-E funding. It makes sense that each county would strive to have their foster children adopted because children being “in the system” are a HUGE expense. Children in foster care not only receive state insurance (Medi-Cal), mental health services, and social support their foster parents also receive a monthly stipend. So it also makes sense that until some sort of incentive was established, children were just remaining in foster care rather than being adopted.  We discovered that if we chose to adopt Anellah she would continue to receive Medi-Cal until she was 18 and we could also continue to receive the same amount of money we currently receive each month for her various expenses (transportation to/from medical appointments, time off work for medical appointments, time off work for hospitalizations, time off work for sick days, etc.)

Meeting Santa

She has a thing for sock puppets

In January we met with an adoptions worker and it sealed the fact that we were indeed interested in adopting Anellah. We also had a team meeting with county workers, Anellah’s Mother,  and Anellah’s Mother’s support system.  The goal of the meeting was to come up with a plan for Anellah and we had hoped that Anellah’s Mother would make a decision that adoption was best for Anellah. Instead she requested 6 more months of reunification which she was bound to be given considering she made progress in the first six months.

Did we want to spend another 6 months waiting and then possibly be able to adopt Anellah or did we want to cut our losses now as the attachment was getting too strong and have her move to a different placement? Questions such as these went through our heads for a couple weeks after the team meeting. Until Anellah’s Mother was ready to see us again and she calmly requested that we adopt Anellah. It was such a God-thing! Only God could have changed her heart and pieced things together so perfectly.

By the end of March we and Anellah’s Mother had done all of our parts related to the adoption. We’d signed a legal mediation agreement regarding what biological contact would look like after the adoption, we’d met with adoptions supervisors, we’d completed our adoption homestudy, and we once again had a positive relationship with Anellah’s mother. The only outstanding issue was that the county only agreed to provide us with half  the amount of money we were currently receiving each month for Anellah. And that’s where we’re still at as I write this, but more (somewhat boring) details next post.