Children Awaiting Adoption

You know there are hundreds of thousands of children awaiting adoption. So, then, how do you actually find yourself adopting and raising one of these thousands?

It starts with a home study. Once a prospective adopter passes that, he or she can start looking through photolistings online. Photolistings are collections of photos and brief biographies of adoptable children within a certain proximity of the adopter. These photolistings are submitted by local public agencies and are a great gateway to understanding the kind of children awaiting adoption as well as a method to establish contact with local agencies.

The majority of waiting children are in the foster system. In 2010, there were about 100,000 adoptable older children in America. They made up about a fourth of the foster care population.

The wait for placement, for foster children, is prolonged by the legal processing of terminating their biological parents' or guardians' parental rights. These wait times have been cut significantly since the late '90s when case workers stopped focusing solely on reunion and more on finding a stable home life for foster children. Depending on the state in which an adoptive parent is adopting, the state agencies may have a fost-adopt or legal risk program in which a child that is not yet awaiting adoption can be placed in a foster home with the expectation that the child will be available for adoption in less than two years.