We have five biological children and have adopted five from China. We started out working on domestic special needs adoption and were stuck in that cycle for two years. It seems as if the US system is very hard to work with and unpredictable. We were open to almost any type of medical special need and sibling groups and it was very frustrating. I lost track of how many children we “pursued” and were either turned down because we had too many children, we didn’t live in the right place, court dates were postponed, etc…. I have a friend going through it right now and it’s the same story. I would love to see US kids get into families, but we spent two years working in that system and finally threw up our hands in frustration. When China relaxed their family size policy back in 1998, we turned down that road and never looked back.
For several years I was the grant coordinator for an adoption ministry and I can verify that domestic adoptions are often more expensive than foreign adoptions, somestimes costing $30,000 or more.
Another reason we were drawn to overseas is that most children in the US have their basic needs met (obviously this excludes the basic need of a permanent family, however food, medical care, education needs are usually met). Three of our adopted children needed immediate medical care when they arrived in the US — one needed open heart surgery, one had border-line malnutrition due to an open cleft palate. The bottom line is that in other countries children leave the orphanage sometime in their teens and very few survive.
The cost issue has to be the biggest hurdle most families face with adoption. How I long to see the church rise up with one accord and financially provide for families who are willing to adopt. I’d estimate that our total adoption costs were around $100,000, including on-going medical needs not covered by insurance. Of that we received approsimately $30,000 in gifts and were able to do the rest on our own. I have no idea how. Our income for our family size would be considerd barely above the poverty level, yet God provided, sometimes at the very last moment, always miraculously.
