The adoption process is nothing like you see in the movies, there was no big home where you walked in and pick what child you would like to call your own. The closest comparison I can think of is like when you are trying to buy a house. The family who would like to adopt is asked to create a one page flyer that talks about your family, what your home life is like and what you have to offer a child. When a child comes up for adoption placement that matches the criteria that you have given, they give your social worker a call and set up a match meeting.
When the day of the match meeting comes your social worker, the Child advocates that is assigned to your child and CPS workers all meet. These people will make the decision as to what family the child will be placed with. The job of your social worker is to basically sell you as the best family for the child that is ready for placement.
During this meeting we were only trying to adopt our two sons as the birth mom had not made it known that she was pregnant with her third child. The boys have the same mom just different dad’s, one is Caucasian and one is bi-racial his dad was African American. During the match meeting there was another social worker who was there to represent a single lady that wanted to adopt. The single lady was an African American woman who was only interested in adopting the bi-racial child; she no desire to raise a Caucasian child.
Personally I cannot imagine separating the children; we were open to accepting both children. The CPS worker thought it would be a good idea to place the Caucasian child with us and the African American child with the single mom. Luckily for us we had a great social worker and the boys had an amazing CASA worker. A CASA worker is a child advocate whose concern is what is best for the children. Our social worker and the child advocate both agreed that the children should stay together.
They fought hard to keep the boys together and we are so lucky that they did as we received news that day that we were going to be parents and were going to meet our sons that weekend and take them home on Monday.
See more of our process through other entries:
Becoming a Mom through adoption