We waited for over two years to be matched with a legally free child or children. I stumbled onto Adopt America Network, and sent our info to them. At this point we were very frustrated. They contacted us very quickly and assigned us to a matching specialist who worked with us through the placing process. The same day we were assigned, she began sending us referrals. As it turned out, we were simultaneously staffed and selected for four sibling groups...or fifteen children. The selection process was tedious and involved mountains of case files, hundreds of phone calls and emails. After about three months we were able to narrow it down to one sibling group that we eventually brought home.

Since you are not so starry eyed (smile) and experienced in special needs adoption, they would probably love to work with you. I have nothing but good things to say about what they did for our family. Our matching specialist was top notch.

We entered into this adventure 4 1/2 years ago, with the intent of adopting a sibling group who already had TPR in place. We were not interested in legal risk, and particularly did not want children who were still having birth parent visits. Our agency told us that they did primarily adoptions from foster care (meaning the foster parents that had the children from the start adopted them). They also occasionally did straight adoptions from the state waiting list, or placed children from foster only families into foster to adopt situations. It took us awhile to realize that what we wanted to do was never going to happen. What we saw was that most of the available children were being adopted by their foster families, and the ones that were not had serious issues beyond what we wanted to deal with. Honestly, we had a limit to the behaviors we felt we could accept, and we began to see that any child/ren they did contact us about, had issues that we felt were too profound to try to mesh into with our bio children.

After refusing every placement referral for foster care, (we kept insisting we did NOT want to be foster parents) we agreed to do an emergency respite for 2 siblings. We ultimately ended up being the only family that would continue to take them for respite, and the foster family was using respite quite frequently due to some health issues, and family activities they did not want to take the foster children to. These two siblings are younger than my bio children and despite some very serious behavioral issues we felt we all did very well together. In conversation with the foster mom, we found out that the children had been in care for almost a year, and no progress made on the birth mom's part, and they were preparing to seek TPR. The foster mother indicated that although they initially thought about adopting, they decided they were not interested in adopting these children and also that she felt they should be the only children in the family due to their behaviors and history.

Long story shortened, the children needed an adoptive placement due to length of time in care, and we were asked to take them, as it seemed they fit well with our children, although not so with the previous foster family's children. Through our ignorance, and the misguided optimism of the agency worker, we felt that we would be able to deal with the uncertainty of the legal risk placement, as it appeared that TPR would be achieved within a relatively short time.

Now, three and one half years after the children came to live with us, we are looking at finalizing their adoption in 2 months. We had birth mother visits up until 5 months ago, when TPR was finally granted, and left to stand, unappealed. We went the gamut of emotional highs and lows through this whole period, we felt we could not continue many times throughout the whole ordeal. We felt powerless (we were) to do anything about the behaviors that ensued because of the on going visits with the birth mother and frustrated that despite every professional recommending that they be stopped, they were not. Our own children were engaged in this roller coaster ride, where the expected outcome changed frequently. Truthfully, we found it excruciating to deal with the legal risk aspect, particularly since they had been with us for so long. We were told that this case was one of the longest running cases our agency had seen. As it got closer to the TPR ruling, the very real fear that these children could leave was devastating, particularly heart breaking to see my bio children's fear and severe anxiety over this very real possibility.

I can say this: had I (we) known it would take this long at the onset, I believe we would have refused to take them. Had we known what lie ahead we would not have gone down that road. Many people have said to us that maybe that is why we did NOT know, because clearly these children belong in our family. However, having taken that road, I cannot picture our family without these children. I will sum it up with these oft repeated words: This is NOT for the fainthearted.