A child in state foster care who is legally free for adoption is a child who’s birth parents rights have been terminated by the state. This means the child is a ward or orphan of the state and has no legal parents. All the paper work is done, and there is no risk that a child placed for adoption will not be adopted by the family selected as the pre adoptive placement.
Legally Free children are those considered as “Waiting Children” and depending on the length of time in care and the number of families interested in adopting more aggressive searching may be needed. Most often, waiting children are older, part of a sibling group, or have special needs which make it more difficult to find adoptive families. At some point in a Waiting Child’s case internet listings and out of state placements are looked for.
A child in state foster care with a case plan for Adoption may be placed with a pre-adoptive family as a “legal risk” placement if the actual termination of parental rights is not yet completed. Many states are very pro active about finding adoptive placements while children are still considered legal risk because the state would like to avoid large numbers of children being wards of the state. Some states do everything possible to keep the number of children considered orphans low and work hard to find adoptive families before the child is considered a waiting child. Usually, children with legal risk status are only shown to families within the state with a hope to find an adoptive placement before the termination of parental rights is completed.
Many families interested in adopting children from their state foster care system are not aware of the fact there may be hundreds of children with case plans for adoption. Visiting your state waiting children listings, or the national waiting child listings may cause a potential adoptive family to think there are few children to consider or that the children available are too old or have too many special needs. This is usually not the case.
The confidentiality laws make it impossible to publicly recruit for adoptive families until a child is legally free. Most states only offer information and profiles about children who are legal risk to families in the state with approved and certified home studies. Some states may have few legally free children with public profiles and yet have hundreds of children considered as legal risk placements.
If you do not have an approved state home study you may not know how many children the state needs to place in adoptive homes. Do not depend on your state waiting children lists to decide if you see children you would like to consider adopting. Once your home study is certified you will have access to the profiles of all children needing adoptive homes. In many cases, the children who are classified as legal risk are younger and have fewer issues because the goal is to find families before the children become waiting and avoid having children bounce around too many times.
A child with a legal risk status does have some increased risks for the adoptive family to consider. Asking the right questions and understanding the progress of the child’s permanency plan can help adoptive families determine how great this risk might be.
Some of the questions to ask about a legal risk child would include;
- When is the termination of parental rights scheduled?
- Has the state completed a “relative placement” search?
- Are there any siblings adopted by other families or living in other foster homes?
- Why the current foster family is not considering adopting? Keep in mind that not all foster family are interested in adopting. If the child is in a foster to adopt family you would want to know why the family did not adopt.
Placement of a child with legal risk status may come with a few issues some families would rather not deal with. Such as continued visitation with the birth family, and possible mediation agreements with birth family members. Legal risk children may require a few more months of post placement supervision and finalization may take a few additional months. Usually, the state will be careful not to place a child with any real chance of a case plan change in a pre-adoptive home but, there is always a chance of some kind of change with legal risk placement.
Our children were still classified as legal risk when we were selected as the adoptive placement. The termination of parental rights took place within 30 days after they moved into our home. We were required to transport our children to a goodbye visit with birth mom the day after the termination of parental rights was completed. Overall, I feel clear communication with the state and an understanding about the child’s case plan can make placement of a legal risk child less stressful for adoptive families. Asking the right questions and understanding the situation of the child is key on deciding the amount of risk an adoptive family is willing to accept.
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For more information about parenting special needs children you might want to visit the Families.com Special Needs Blog and the Mental Health Blog. Or visit my personal website.