For prospective adoptive parents living in Colorado, A Love Beyond Borders (LBB) offers the necessary home study and post adoption services that will help you satisfy the Colorado state adoption laws and prepare you for a domestic or international adoption. We provide services to clients throughout the State of Colorado. These services include adoptive home study (also referred to as family assessment), pre-adoption education, and post adoption services, validation of foreign adoption.
We provide a variety of home study types including those for domestic adoptions, kinship adoptions, designated adoption, court-ordered home studies, step-parent adoption, second-parent adoption, international home studies and Hague-Convention compliant home study. Timeline and fees may vary depending upon the service provided.
A Colorado statute requires all Colorado adoptive families preparing to adopt to have a current approved family assessment/home study from a licensed child placement agency such as A Love Beyond Borders. We are licensed to do domestic and international home study's including home studies for Hague-Convention countries. LBB is full service and can provide the home study and child placement for an international adoption or domestic kinship or designated adoption, or can provide only the home study and post adoption services if you choose to work with a licensed agency outside of Colorado. We collaborate with licensed agencies throughout the US and would be happy to collaborate with your out of state placement agency.
The adoption home study is a detailed written report of your family compiled and prepared by a social worker. LBB hires experienced social workers and case workers with significant professional experience in adoption and family therapy. Several are adoptive parents themselves. They seek to make the home study experience a pleasant, collaborative learning experience for you.
The typical home study can take one to three or more months for a domestic or international home study. A Hague-compliant home study may take 3-4 months to complete depending upon several factors, mainly determined by the adoptive family. The adoption home study requires the prospective adoptive family to gather different documents, answer several questions, and explore their reasons for adopting. Through a series of visits and interviews the social worker can get a complete picture of who you are and what life is like in your family. The adoption home study is a part of the decision making process for both the prospective family and the workers. Not only can the adoption home study help the worker place a child into your home who would best fit into your family, but help the family and the worker decide if the adoptive family is physically, emotionally and financially prepared to adopt.
Entering into the family assessment process does not guarantee that your family assessment will be approved. Please be reassured that in most cases where there is a decision not to continue it is usually the family who makes the decision after exploring adoption with their adoption worker. But if at any time during the family assessment your adoption worker believes that the agency will not be able to recommend you for approval for an adoptive placement, his or her concerns will be discussed with you.
If there are issues that need closer assessment than is normally included in the adoption process, the agency may ask you, at your expense, to supplement the family assessment with an independent psychological or marital evaluation with an agency-referred professional.
When the interviews are completed and the required documents submitted, your adoption worker prepares a written family assessment and submits it to the Placement Supervisor. The Placement Supervisor will review your family assessment with the supporting documents, and then will advise you as to whether the agency will be able to place an adoptive child in your home.
Once approved by our placement supervisor, your family assessment is sent to the State of Colorado for final review and approval. If you are adopting internationally we forward your state approved home study to USCIS along with the immigration petitions you provide to us.
State and USCIS approval in Colorado takes --on average -- six to nine weeks in addition to the home study evaluation time.
As part of your preparation for adoption, you will receive education that will help make your adoption process and most especially enhance your parenting skills unique to adoption issues. The state of Colorado now requires prospective adoptive parents complete a minimum of 16 Core hours of pre-adoption education in person, and up to 24 hours of training for international or special needs adoptions which will include attending group trainings, taking on-line training, reading books, watching videos, or doing individual research. ALL education requirements must be completed before placement of the child.
In addition to the education we provide, we encourage you explore these topics on your own via the internet, adoption support groups, etc.
Some of the subjects to be covered in your pre-adoption education:
- Attachment and bonding
-
Loss, grief and adoption
-
Transracial parenting
-
Adoption as a lifelong issue
-
Child development
-
Boundary setting and discipline
-
Parenting
a child of a different culture
-
Fetal
Alcohol Syndrome
-
Medical
and emotional issues related to international adoption
-
Adoption issues of personal interest
Colorado requires post-placement supervision for all adoptions to be finalized or validated in Colorado. This excludes international adoptions where the adoption was finalized abroad (when both parents met the child prior to the adoption) and where the adoptive country does not require them. However, LBB believes it is best practice for our social worker to meet with the adoptive family at least twice upon arrival of the child to the home. This is especially important for a family adopting an older child or sibling group because adjustment may be more difficult on the child and newly expanded family. We will be able to assist you through this transition time. For this reason we ask our homestudy clients to agree to a minimum of two post adoption visits after the child arrives home.
Your post-adoptive commitment to your child’s country may include a need for additional post-placement home visits for an extended period of time, which we will be happy to provide for an additional fee. For this service we provide the additional post placement visits and certified reports if required by the adoptive country. Translation assistance may be available for an additional charge.
The same adoption worker who completed your family assessment will usually work with you in post-adoption. She will visit with you and your child after placement, plus provide reasonable phone support.
For those who are experiencing severe post-placement problems we strongly encourage you to contact us so we can further assist you or provide you with referrals to appropriate professional resources. This is no time to go it alone, so please let us know you need assistance.
When your adoption is complete in the foreign country there are still many loose ends that need to be completed. Although you may be ready to set aside additional paperwork at this point, we strongly encourage adoptive families to tie up these loose ends earlier rather than later. You may complete these on your own, or for an additional fee LBB will be pleased to assist you.
-
Validation of your
international adoption in a Colorado court. As part of our post placement services, A Love Beyond Borders provides validation services once you are home with your child.
-
File for your
child's Colorado birth certificate. After your validation of foreign adoption is complete, the Vital Records Office will provide you with an application for a Registry of Foreign Birth (basically like a birth certificate which will list the birth country) within about 12 weeks.
-
Fulfillment of
additional post-adoption requirements of your adoptive country, if any (above the basic visits required by LBB). This includes additional home visits and filing of certified reports to the foreign country or your placement agency (if not LBB).
-
Counseling: Any additional counseling provided by one of our social workers beyond the basic post adoption visits for children and families in need. If you choose to work with a counselor or specialist unaffiliated with LBB, LBB can provide you with a list of qualified professionals to meet you and your child's needs. We are well-connected to the adoption professionals throughout Colorado and can provide recommendations to any number of professionals.
|
