November 08, 2015

National Adoption Month + Myths About Foster Care

Each November is a special month for the adoption community, because it’s National Adoption Month. It’s a month dedicated to adoption awareness, and each year a new theme is chosen to help illuminate, share knowledge, and promote different causes in the adoption world. This year the focus is on adopting older youth from foster care, an extremely important initiative that affects so many children stuck in the system, at risk for aging out and becoming completely autonomous at 18 years old without any family or support system in place.

We’ll be highlighting this issue throughout the month on the blog, but today we want to start by putting to bed some destructive myths about the nature of older child adoption from foster care.

1. All foster care children are difficult to deal with and have special emotional and learning needs. This just isn’t true. There are a number of children, yes, who have emotional issues as the result of being abandoned by families who couldn’t support them, unable to connect with a family who wants to adopt them. These are kids who have had a tough go, and really just need someone to love and support them. Also, the term “special needs” has a wide-ranging definition in the foster care community. It could simply mean that they’re older, making them more difficult to place. That simple fact could get them labeled “special needs,” wherein a whole of assumptions about what that means can come into play.
2. It’s expensive. Adoption from foster care is actually the least expensive type of adoption. In fact, the average cost is $2500 or less. You may also be able to receive grants from the government for your child’s education, which is a huge financial boost for both you and your child.
3. I’m too old. There are absolutely no age requirements for fostering a child, other than you have to be at least 21.
4. I have to be wealthy. Does one have to be wealthy to have a biological child? No, of course not. And the same is true when it comes to fostering/adopting a child through foster care. You do have to be financially secure so they can ensure the child’s needs are able to be met, but you in no way have to be wealthy.
5. If I get involved in the foster care system, I’m going to have to take on more than one child. Not at all. You will never have to foster or adopt a child that you can’t or do not wish to take in. It’s a relationship that should be mutual — both parties should feel comfortable. The child should feel comfortable with and want to be a part of the family as much as the family should want the child to join their family. No one in the foster care system will ever force you to do something you don’t want to do.