Domestic Infant Adoption vs Foster to Adopt in Florida

When you’re ready to start building your family, you might be wondering whether you should foster or adopt in Florida. 

There are many options available for hopeful parents. You could choose to pursue foster care adoption through a foster care facility. This could be perfect if you’re looking for older children or you’d like to adopt a set of siblings. If you’d prefer to adopt a newborn, you might find that private domestic adoption is best for you.

You have a lot of choices, so it’s important to understand the difference between foster and adopt in Florida. Each family has unique hopes and dreams for their adoption experience. Your adoption might look different than that of your friends, neighbors or relatives. The more you understand about the types of adoption, the better equipped you’ll be to advocate for the experience that you’re hoping for.

In this article, we’ll discuss the difference between foster care and adoption in Florida and help you decide which is best for you.

Foster Care vs. Adoption in Florida

If you’ve been considering welcoming a child into your family, you might be wondering about the differences between adoption or foster care in Florida. While both adoption and foster care in Florida are important, understanding how they differ can help you decide which one is best for you.

Foster Care

Simply put, foster care means that a child is placed with a family on a temporary basis because their birth family is unable to care for them. The goal of foster care is to reunite children with their birth families.

Children in foster care may:

• Have experienced trauma they need help dealing with
• Be older (including teenagers)
• Have siblings they would like to be placed with

It’s important to remember that children in foster care previously lived with their birth families and may hope to return. While some children from foster care are adopted later, not every child is eligible for adoption, and not every foster child wants to be adopted.

Adoption

Private Domestic Adoption, on the other hand, is designed to help a newborn or baby connect with a forever family. A birth mother will lovingly make the decision to place her baby for adoption. She will terminate her parental rights voluntarily, and the adoptive family will become the baby’s legal parents.

One special thing about private domestic adoption is that a birth mother gets to choose the adoptive family for her baby. Choosing her baby’s family is an important part of the adoption process. In some cases, a birth mother may want to talk to the family before her child is born. Sometimes, the adoptive family will even be present for the birth.

Private domestic adoption agencies help:

• Birth mothers choose the perfect adoptive family for their baby
• Support birth mothers during their pregnancy
• Provide birth mothers with emotional and financial support
• Assist adoptive families with completing their home studies
• Provide adoptive families with guidance throughout their adoption
• Support all members of the adoption triad during finalization
• And more

What is the Adoption Timeline?

When you’re considering foster care versus adoption in Florida, it’s normal to be curious about your adoption timeline.

With adoption versus foster care in Florida, one of the biggest differences is that the timeline for private domestic adoption is predictable.

When you work with a private adoption agency, such as American Adoptions, your wait for adoption will be an average of 12 months. This means that you’ll have a pretty good idea of when you can expect to welcome your baby home. Of course, you can always work with your adoption specialist to modify your APQ to show that you’re open to unexpected adoption opportunities.

Additionally, our team can offer you accurate wait time estimates because we are licensed and independently reviewed. While other adoption agencies might offer you a “guess” as to how long the adoption process will take, they may not be able to offer you an accurate timeline. This is because they don’t get audited as part of the licensing process.

One major difference between foster and adoption in Florida is that with private domestic adoption, you will have a clear outline of adoption steps, including:

• Filling out your APQ
• Completing your home study
• Creating your waiting family profile
• Matching with a birth mother
• Meeting your baby (placement)
• Finalization

Foster care adoption, on the other hand, can be very unpredictable. With this type of care, most children want to return to their birth families.

One important difference between foster and adoption in Florida is that with foster care, you may have a child who lives with you for months or years but who is not eligible for adoption.

Some families are okay with this and are happy to provide short-term care to a child who needs a loving family. Other families would prefer to know that they are going to be able to adopt the child they’re providing care for.

Choosing Adoption

If you understand the difference between foster and adoption in Florida and you know that private domestic infant adoption is right for you, reach out to American Adoptions today.

Our team provides:

• Risk-free financial protection
• Support throughout the adoption process
• Matching services throughout the United States
• And more

You can reach us by calling 1-800-ADOPTION or visiting us online and filling out our contact form.

Disclaimer
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