How many child can you adopt

American Adoptions - Adoption Requirements in the U.S.

Parenting, no matter how you get there, is an immense responsibility. It’s also a joy, to be sure. But the weight of it — shaping a child’s life, providing safety and comfort, creating opportunity — is significant. It makes sense, with this level of responsibility in mind, that there would be some requirements to adopt a child.

If you are considering adoption, one of your first steps is learning about these requirements. They may be different depending on where you live, which agency you work with and which type of adoption you are pursuing. This guide to adoption requirements will help you figure it all out. You can also call 1-800-ADOPTION or click here to get help from an adoption professional now.

As a national adoption agency, American Adoptions adheres to each state’s private domestic adoption laws and requirements. Like most agencies, we also have our own specific requirements. That may sound strict, but here’s the truth: adoption requirements are important to make sure that everyone, birth mother, adoptive family and child, only end up in the best situations.

Each state has its own unique laws and adoption requirements. Our database on adoption information for each state can help you learn more about your specific state laws. It’s also a good idea to speak with an adoption specialist about your state’s laws, as these laws are always subject to change.

First, let’s look at some of the questions we are commonly asked about the requirements to adopt a child through our agency.

Prospective birth mothers reading this, you can find a complete guide to the requirements for placing your child for adoption if you click this link. You can also connect with a professional today.

Do I have to be married to adopt a child?

Like other domestic adoption requirements, the marriage requirements for adopting a child depend on where you live and which agency you choose to adopt through. For example, American Adoptions is currently able to work with couples who have been married a minimum of two years. If you do not meet our marriage adoption requirements, but still wish to join our agency, please contact us to inquire about our exception process.

Some states require married couples to be married for 2-3 years before they are eligible to jointly adopt a child.

What are the requirements for adopting a child?

Adoption requirements are going to change based on where you live, the type of adoption you choose and your adoption agency. The best way to find out about adoption requirements is on a case-by-case basis. However, there are some requirements that are consistent across the board.

How old do you have to be to adopt?

Age requirements for adoption differ significantly based on the state you are in.

According to the Child Welfare Information Gateway, the requirements for age can vary significantly. Seven states only require the adoptive parents to be 18 years old. Three states (Colorado, Delaware and Oklahoma) set the age requirement at 21. Two states (Georgia and Idaho) have set the bar at 25. In other parts of the country, the requirement is simply that adoptive parents be at least 10 years older than the child they are going to adopt.

Many states do not specify a minimum age to be eligible to adopt. Seem confusing? It can be. That’s why you should check with an adoption professional about the age requirements for adoption in your state and the age requirements of the agency you want to work with, as most agencies do set their own age expectations for adoptive parents. At American Adoptions, you must be between 25 and 50 years old to adopt.

How old is too old to adopt?

There are very few state laws with adoptive parent requirements that disallow older people of a specific age from adopting a child.

However, during the adoption home study, your physical and mental health will be evaluated to ensure you are healthy enough to raise a child. At American Adoptions, we set our upper age limit for adoption at 50.

I was convicted of a felony in the past — am I able to adopt a child?

Many people wonder if having a criminal record makes you unable to meet the qualifications for adoption.

If you were convicted of a felony, it doesn’t necessarily mean you cannot adopt. Your home study social worker will speak with you about the felony, when and why it happened, what you learned from that event, and how you’ve taken steps to correct any past mistakes.

Whether you are deemed eligible to adopt largely relies on the nature of the felony. If the felony involved child abuse or neglect, domestic violence, child pornography or sexual assault, it is highly unlikely that your home study will be approved and that you will be eligible to adopt a child.

Can I adopt if I already have a child?

This will vary agency to agency. Some have no requirements regarding other children in the house; others may have a limit to how many children are already present in the home. American Adoptions requires that there are no more than two children already in the home and no child under the age of one. This is to ensure that you will not be overwhelmed by the extra responsibility that comes with caring for a newborn.

What qualification do you need to adopt a child from foster care?

Your state’s private adoption requirements are likely similar for foster care adoption, but there may be some minor differences. For example, in Nevada you must be 21 years or older to foster parent a child. However, to adopt the child, you also have to be 10 years older than the child.

Can same-sex couples and LGBTQ single parents adopt a child?

As long as they meet their state’s other requirements to be an adoptive parent, LGBTQ couples and individuals can adopt in all 50 states. Legally, your sexuality is not a factor for adoption criteria in the U.S.

However, some states are actively advancing legislation that makes it easier for individual organizations to discriminate on the basis of sexuality. That means that while according to the law you can adopt, a private organization could still refuse to serve you.

Make sure to check with any adoption professional before you begin working with them. You deserve the full support of your agency during this process. American Adoptions is proud to work with many LGTBQ couples in the adoption process.

Adoption Requirements by State for a Private Domestic Adoption:

Credit: Child Welfare Information Gateway. This chart is a brief overview of the adoption requirements by the laws of each state and American Adoptions is not responsible for any inaccuracies or legal consequences based on information in this article. 

For updated state adoption requirements, contact a local adoption attorney or get free adoption information.

Disclaimer
Information available through these links is the sole property of the companies and organizations listed therein. America Adoptions, Inc. provides this information as a courtesy and is in no way responsible for its content or accuracy.

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US Adoption Statistics | Adoption Network

US Adoption Statistics

Adoption is all around us, even if we don’t see it. Every day, there are children being adopted into loving families all across the country. Adopting a baby requires guidance from an experienced adoption professional. Adoption Network Law Center is a California law corporation providing quality, professional adoption services to prospective Birth Mothers and Adoptive Parents nationwide. Here are some interesting adoption statistics you may not know about.

How many Americans have adopted a child?

Although it is estimated that between 2-4% of Americans have adopted, more than 1/3 have considered it.¹

Up to out of every 25 U.S. families with children have an adopted child. According to the data compiled from the 2010 U.S. Census, about half of these have both biological and adopted children.

How many Americans are adopted?

Around 5 million Americans are adopted.

How many children in American are adopted?

There are about 4.5 million adopted children in the United States, which is 7% of the population reported in the 2010 Census. This amount includes children who are adopted by relatives or a stepparent.

How many children are adopted each year?

According to the Adoption by the Numbers© 2022 study conducted by the National Council on Adoption, approximately 115,353 adoptions took place in 2019. This data includes private placements as well as those from foster care and stepparent adoptions.²

How common is adoption?

Yougov.com reported in 2019 that one quarter of those surveyed had either a friend or family member who is adopted and almost as many (24%) had themselves considered adopting. Also of note is that the number of adoptive homes with same-sex parents nearly doubled from 2000 to 2009. Half of those surveyed by the Dave Thomas Foundation approve of adoption into families with same-sex parents.

How common are open adoptions?

Today, approximately 95% of domestic infant adoptions are considered to be open adoptions. This is because these adoptions include some degree of openness and sharing and information between adoptive and birth parents regarding themselves and the adopted child. About two-thirds of domestic infant adoptions experience some level of continued post-placement contact.

How common is international adoption?

As international adoptions became more restrictive the placements declined and so did the number of U. S. families who choose them. International adoptions by U.S. citizens have declined from 19,942 in 2007, to 9,319 in 2011 to 1,785 for the most recent reporting period.

How many people are waiting to adopt a child?

There are no national statistics on how many people are waiting to adopt, but experts estimate it is somewhere between one and two million couples.

What is the most adopted race?

For reporting year 2016, almost 49% of adopted children are non-Hispanic white. Overall, 25% of adopted children are of a different race, culture, or ethnicity than both of their adoptive parents (or their sole parent if there is only one parent in the household). The percentage of African American children who are adopted from foster care is disproportionately represented.

How many children are available for adoption in the United States?

The most recent AFCARS report of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services states that there are almost 114,000 foster children eligible for and waiting to be adopted.  In 2021, 54,200 foster kids were adopted which is a decline of approximately 3700 from the prior year. Although the number of adoptions has declined, the report found that for the past decade the percentage of children in foster care who are eligible for adoption has remained stable from 26-29%. Among these children, males outnumber females.

What is the average age of an adopted child?

The average age of a waiting child is almost 8 years old. Fifty-two percent of children entered foster care in 2019 were 6 years old or older.

How many children are in the foster care system in the United States?

On any given day, there are approximately 391,000 children in foster care in the United States. In 2022, almost 214,000 children entered the U.S. foster care system, and infants represented over 70% of the total increase.

How long does the average child spend in the foster care system?

Close to 60% of children in foster care spend two to five years in the system before being adopted. Almost 11% spend five or more years in foster care before being adopted. Some are never adopted.

How much does it cost the government to keep a child in foster care?

Foster care funding totals 65% of total funds allocated for child welfare purposes (Title IV-E), with adoption assistance used for another 22%. Funding for prevention and reunification purposes was 11%. Congressional Research Service reports that federal funding for these programs for 2023 is estimated to be $10.6 billion.

1. 2022 US Adoption Attitudes Survey Conducted by The Harris Poll on behalf of the Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption Published February 2022
2. Adoption By The Numbers© 2022 National Council for Adoption accessed 3/7/2023

Learn more about adoption.

answers » Official site of the urban district of the Arkhangelsk region "Mirny"

QUESTION: Can people who are able to give birth or already have children adopt? If not, is it required to provide a certificate of impossibility to give birth to the guardianship authorities?

Surely they can! There is not a single legal restriction on adoption by people who are able to give birth and / or have children, relatives and / or adopted children, guardians, etc.

It happens, nevertheless, that applicants for adoptive parents are required to provide a certificate of infertility. However, this is completely illegal. In this case, you should demand from the guardianship specialist a regulatory document on the basis of which such a requirement is made. You can demand a written request from the guardianship authorities to the medical institution to obtain such a certificate, but with this request, do not go to the medical institution, but contact a higher authority or the district prosecutor's office to challenge this illegal requirement.

OUR OPINION: It would be terrible if someone came up with the idea to ban people who already have children from adopting. Such adoptive parents are perhaps the most valuable, they also have experience in upbringing, and the environment contributes to a better adaptation of the child, they less often insist on secrecy and more often take older children.

QUESTION: Can a single person adopt a child?

Yes, maybe. The legislation provides for adoption by a married couple, one of the spouses or a single, unmarried adoptive parent. The difference in procedure is minimal: a married couple presents a marriage certificate to the court, a single adoptive parent - a birth certificate.

It should be noted that the guardianship authorities treat single adoptive parents more carefully, carefully study the motives for adoption and the family situation in the candidate's house.

In addition, the Family Code (clause 2, art. 127 of the RF IC) prohibits persons who are not married to each other from jointly adopting the same child.

OUR OPINION: In some countries where there are enough willing to adopt, there are such restrictions and only a married couple can adopt. Such requirements are justified: a single parent faces great difficulties in raising and providing for a child. Incomplete families are at risk, and first you should think very carefully whether you can cope with psychological and financial difficulties, give a full-fledged upbringing to a child, whether your “rear” is strong enough for this and whether the risk is justified.

QUESTION: What are the age limits for adoptive parents and guardians?

Only adult citizens can adopt, there are no upper legal age limits for adoptive parents and guardians. The legislation does not stipulate the minimum age for custody or adoption of children. There is only a restriction on the minimum age difference between a single adoptive parent and a child - it must be at least 16 years old (clause 1, article 128 of the RF IC).

OUR OPINION: In addition to the norms of the law, it is necessary to take into account one's own possibilities for the future, the perception of others, and after a very short time - the opinion of the child. First of all, difficulties arise with the fact that the needs of the child increase with age both in material terms and in terms of active communication. The hardest thing for parents is with teenagers - they need to buy expensive fashionable clothes, spend money on additional classes, etc., be flexible and have a reserve of strength and patience in order to actively participate in the life of a teenager, otherwise his life will fill the street. No matter how much we want to be distracted from our own age, no matter what forces and intentions guide us, we must understand that age matters.

It would be wise for adoptive parents to focus on older children and, for starters, choose such a form of arrangement as guardianship, since it allows both the guardian and the child to receive support from the state (payment for the maintenance of the child, material assistance upon exit from under guardianship, benefits for admission to a university, provision of housing if the child is not already assigned, etc.).

QUESTION: How much does it cost to adopt a child for Russian citizens?

All adoption procedures are free of charge. Submission of applications, medical examinations of candidates and children, obtaining all certificates - everything is free. No court fee is charged.

However, the costs associated with adoption are unavoidable. It is worth considering the costs of: transportation, if you have to look for a child in another area, and temporary accommodation there; possibly the services of lawyers and hiring a lawyer to participate in court; and, of course, preparing the house for the adoption of a child: the purchase of furniture, clothes, toys, books, etc.

QUESTION: I heard that there is a long waiting list for adoption. Is it so?

No, it is not. Unfortunately, there are many more abandoned children than those who want to adopt them. Whether or not you have to stand in line depends on the requirements you place on your child. Very often, adoptive parents want to adopt an absolutely healthy newborn girl with light eyes and hair. But there are few such children, and there are many who want to take just such a child. Some want to resort to imitation pregnancy, and picking up a newborn baby is even more difficult.

On the other hand, there are a lot of unclaimed children who are slightly older or have minor health problems that leave them without parents. Therefore, one should either prepare for an indefinite waiting period for a suitable child, or yield somewhat in their demands. Moreover, getting into a warm home environment filled with love and care, any child flourishes, and medical problems are compensated.

QUESTION: What housing benefits do adoptive parents receive?

There are no such benefits for adoptive parents. Moreover, the requirements for adoptive parents include the requirement to have a living space sufficient to accommodate a child in compliance with current sanitary standards. Additional living space or a house can only be provided to foster families who, under an agreement with local authorities, take several children to raise. Recently, some regions have adopted laws to support adoptive parents, according to which successful families can be allocated additional housing for adopted children. If the adoption is canceled, this housing remains with the child, and not with the former adoptive parents.

QUESTION: Guardianship authorities, what is this and where?

"Guardianship and guardianship authorities" is the general name of all bodies that ensure the protection of children's rights.

Specialists in the protection of the rights of children of local self-government bodies work directly with adoptive parents, guardians, foster families (clause 2, article 121 of the RF IC). In our city, specialists of the guardianship and guardianship authority are located at: st. Lenina, d. 33, room. No. 207; Reception days: Tuesday: 9.00-13.00; Thursday: 14.30-17.00. Contact phone: 5-04-20.

The duties of the guardianship authorities, among many others, include: identifying children in need of protection, placing them in institutions and families, protecting property rights, checking the situation of children.

When working with adoptive parents, guardians and foster families, specialist:

• Keeps records of citizens who have expressed a desire to become adoptive parents / guardians / create a foster family (hereinafter referred to as candidates).
• Advise candidates.
• Conducts a survey of their living conditions and gives an opinion on the possibility of being adoptive parents / guardians.
• Provides assistance to adoptive parents in the selection of a child.
• Prepares an opinion for the court on the advisability of adopting a child chosen by the adoptive parents;
• Prepares documents for children transferred to families, an order for the transfer of a child under guardianship and documents for the appointment of guardianship allowance.
• Provides assistance to guardians and foster parents in education, organization of summer holidays.
• Monitors the living conditions and health of wards and adopted children.
• If necessary, prepares draft administrative documents on the release, removal of guardians from the performance of their duties, cancellation of adoption.

QUESTION: Can I adopt an adult?

Alas, the adoption of adults in Russian law is not provided. First of all, because adoption in Russia is seen as a way to protect children left without parental care, giving them a home, family and homeland. Adoption of adults was widespread in the ancient world, especially during the imperial period of Rome. Thus, property rights, patrimonial privileges and titles were transferred there. Now in some countries the adoption of adults is still preserved, for example in Japan.

QUESTION: Is there a big risk that the birth mother will persistently look for the adopted child and try to take it away from me?

Such cases are quite rare and occur more often when adoptive parents violate the elementary foundations of ethics. First of all, this happens when childless spouses, wishing to adopt a healthy newborn from a young or distressed mother, seek out unscrupulous doctors who promise to find such a child. By persuasion, and sometimes by deceit, they contribute to the thoughtless abandonment of the mother from her child. Subsequently, having matured, having come out of the crisis, such a mother, and often all her relatives, start searching for the child and even sue to cancel the adoption, and the adoptive parents are forced to hide, explain to the guardianship authorities, the grown child, or may become a victim of blackmail.

QUESTION: What is the procedure for adopting a wife's (husband's) child?

The procedure differs little from a regular adoption. However, since the child is known and the wife (husband) agrees to the adoption, the guardianship authorities do not need to draw up a separate Conclusion on the possibility of being an adoptive parent and there is no need to contact the database operator with a request to search for the child and you can immediately go to court, which means the whole procedure will pass much faster, most stepfathers of such adoptions do not take more than 1-2 months. It will be enough for you to write one application instead of three, which is much faster. For stepfathers and stepmothers, there are no housing requirements (clause 12 of article 127 of the UK) and restrictions on the age difference between the adopter and the adoptee (clause 2 of article 128 of the RF IC). Keep in mind that if the father (mother) of the child has died, then at the request of relatives on the father's side, their rights can be preserved by a court decision.

QUESTION: We have no time to deal with paperwork and search for a child, but we are wealthy people and we can pay for the services of a company, where can we turn?

Intermediary services in the selection of children for adoption are prohibited by law and there are no legal organizations, except for guardianship authorities and regional operators, authorized for such activities (Article 126.1 of the RF IC), in addition, the adoption procedure is structured in such a way that the most important and time-consuming stages are: medical examination, choice of a child, acquaintance with him and his documents, participation in court, adoptive parents are required to go through personally!

QUESTION: What is the first step in adoption?

The first step is to apply to the guardianship authorities at your place of residence to obtain a Conclusion on the possibility of being an adoptive parent.

The task of the specialist is to listen to you, find out the motive for adoption, explain the requirements of the law, the rights and obligations of adoptive parents in relation to the adopted child, outline the sequence of the registration procedure, answer your questions and issue the necessary forms.

Don't be surprised if you get a cold welcome at first. The fact is that quite often people with serious mental problems or unscrupulous people apply for adoption, which requires the specialist to always be on guard. In addition, in addition to working with adoptive parents, he has a lot of other responsibilities and very often he simply lacks the time and patience. It happens to get on a specialist who is illiterate and does not care about the interests of children. Therefore, it makes sense to start with an independent study of the law and understand for yourself the requirements and restrictions for candidates, the rights and obligations of guardianship authorities and yours. In order not to be ignored in the guardianship authorities, prepare an application in advance with a request to give a Conclusion on the possibility of being an adoptive parent (s) in triplicate. Submit the first copy to the office of the institution where the specialist department is located. The second will remain with you, and on it the office is obliged to put a stamp on admission, indicating the date, incoming number and name of the recipient. Give the third copy to a specialist so that he can start working with you immediately, and not wait for someone coming from the office. Ideally, if you can immediately bring at least some of the documents required by the list, at least be sure to bring copies.

OUR OPINION: Well prepared, you will feel much more confident. Speaking the same language as a specialist will make it easier for you to communicate and convey the subtleties of your situation, and a negligent specialist will be much less likely to ignore you.

QUESTION: In what terms and from what moment should the application of citizens intending to adopt be considered in the guardianship authorities?

The law establishes a period of 15 working days (Government Decree No. 275, art. 9) from the moment of acceptance of the application and the necessary documents prepared by the future adopter. This period includes consideration, verification of these documents, examination of living conditions (if the adopter actually lives in this territory) and the issuance of a conclusion on the possibility of being an adoptive parent.

The guardianship and guardianship body shall bring to the attention of the applicant a negative conclusion and, based on it, a refusal to register as candidates for adoptive parents within 5 days from the date of its signing. At the same time, all documents are returned to the applicant and the procedure for appealing the decision is explained.

QUESTION: Our chosen child has two older brothers, can we adopt only the younger girl?

The law allows children to be separated only as a last resort, when the children do not know each other or one of the separated children is disabled and is in a specialized institution and the adoption of one of them is in his interests. The interests of the adoptive parents are not taken into account, since adoption is a form of protection for children. However, such a requirement is presented only in case of adoption (adoption). it destroys family ties and decides on the possibility or impossibility of such adoption by the court. However, the separation of children is allowed when establishing guardianship, since in this case the children do not lose family ties with each other. Nevertheless, even when establishing guardianship, they still try not to separate children if they are brought up in the same institution and are attached to each other.

QUESTION: Can the selected child be taken home before the trial?

Sometimes this is possible, but it depends on many factors. First of all, from the state of paperwork, the time remaining until the trial and the type of institution in which the child is located. It is most difficult to take a child adopted from home, mainly because this is a medical institution, the children there are small, doctors try to limit the contact of children with strangers in order to exclude diseases of children, and all the troubles associated with subsequent quarantine. Therefore, fearing the situation while the child will be with you on "bird rights", doctors may not allow this - after all, the responsibility lies entirely with them! Another thing is older children who are in orphanages, orphanages or hospitals.

If all the documents have been prepared, there are no fundamental problems left and it is only necessary to wait for the court, then everything is decided by the type of institution and the human factor: how the director of this children's institution and the specialist of guardianship authorities treat you. With a trusting relationship, you can hope that, with the consent of guardianship, the child will be transferred to you as a visitor (for adaptation) before the trial.

OUR OPINION: Each such situation is very individual. Despite your keen desire to quickly take the child into the house, still try to take into account the interests and understand the positions of all parties, and, first of all, the interests of the child. Try to understand the actions of people responsible for children, in any outcome of events, because one thing is an overcrowded hospital, where healthy abandoned children are among the sick and occupy medical places, and another is a premature baby in the maternity ward.

Finding and choosing your child

Having come to the idea of ​​adopting a child, potential parents begin to think about what their new family member should be like: will it be a boy or a girl, what age, what appearance, etc. As a rule, this stage of the adoption procedure (establishment of guardianship) is one of the most difficult for adoptive parents and takes a lot of time.

Practice shows that the vast majority of adoptive parents want to adopt a little girl, with an angelic appearance and as healthy as possible. Few of the adoptive parents consciously seek to adopt a disabled child, with defects in appearance or serious illnesses. However, this “ideal” idea of ​​a foster child often has to be abandoned when confronted with reality. Firstly, in order to adopt a healthy little girl, many adoptive parents have to spend a lot of time looking for her, or rely on chance and luck. Secondly, according to pediatricians, there are practically no completely healthy children among those abandoned by their parents. There are many reasons for this, and we will consider them separately.

Summarizing all of the above, we do not recommend setting strict criteria - sex, age and health of the child during adoption. There are many examples when candidates for adoptive parents, having visited a children's institution and seeing the eyes of children waiting for their parents, having heard them address strangers with the word "mother", abandon their original intention and instead of a one-year-old girl decide to adopt a six-year-old boy . Also very often there are cases when, having chosen one child for adoption, and having learned that he also has a brother (sister), adoptive parents decide to accept both children into the family.

Quite often the decision to take a child into a family is made under the influence of external circumstances - you learned about a neighbor's child who ended up in an orphanage; saw an orphan in the hospital; a friend who works in an orphanage spoke about a particular baby; or you are somehow connected with the children's institution in which such a child ended up. But if everything happened differently for you, and you came to adoption on your own, and the image of the desired child is still very abstract, made up of stories, memories, personal experience and other trifles, how then will you approach the search for a child and what lies ahead on this path?

First of all, prospective adoptive parents should put aside myths about the process of searching for a child. Do not rely on chance: today state authorities are ready to help you in choosing a child. In our country, there is a recently developed system for searching for children for adoption, called “Hope”, which includes the State Data Bank on children left without parental care and who need to be placed in a family for adoption, guardianship, foster family, patronage. All provisions of work with this data bank are regulated by the Federal Law, certain provisions and forms of documents are introduced by Orders of the Ministry of Education of the Russian Federation.

Formation of the Data Bank starts from the district level. The guardianship authority, having received information about the appearance of a child who has lost parental care in a children's institution (children's home, orphanage, orphanage, hospital, etc.) located in the territory under its jurisdiction, fills out a special questionnaire for the child, in which all data are indicated in detail the child, his parents and other relatives, a photograph is attached. During the first month from the moment a child left without parental care is identified, the local guardianship body is obliged to make efforts to place him in a family and keep the child's file only with himself.

If within a month the child has not been placed in a family, his/her questionnaire is transferred to the next instance, which is subordinate to the regional authorities. At this level, data about the child is entered into the Regional Data Bank, which is most often under the jurisdiction of the district committee (department) of education, or is subordinate to the social protection authorities under the Administration of the region. Manages the information contained in this data bank, the Regional operator of the data bank on children left without parental care.

Having received information about the child, the Operator, in turn, attempts to place him in a family of citizens living in this area. For this purpose, the following actions can be taken:

• publication of shortened, so-called derivative information about the child in newspapers, magazines, specially published bulletins;
• a story about a child in TV programs, on the radio;
• posting information about the child on bulletin boards, electronic websites, etc.

If within a month the child failed to find a family, then his profile is transferred further, to the highest level - the Federal Data Bank Operator under the Ministry of Education of the Russian Federation.

As you can see from the reporting system below, the most complete and up-to-date records of children are held by local child care authorities and it is best to contact them directly. However, given the realities of our lives, you may encounter a lack of childcare facilities in the area with children of the desired age or information about children; you may not be satisfied with the attitude of the guardian; or perhaps you want to take a child from another area in order to avoid meeting with his parents. Then, having received the primary documents (conclusion on the possibility of being an adoptive parent / guardian /, becoming a foster parent) and capturing the necessary certificates and passport, you have the right to apply to any regional or federal operator.

Then you will need to write a statement of your desire to adopt a child for upbringing in a family with a request to acquaint you with the information about children in the state data bank that meets your wishes, as well as fill out a special questionnaire of a citizen who wants to take a child for upbringing in his family , to enter information about you in the data bank. After receiving such an application, the Data Bank Operator is obliged to provide you with the required information - profiles of children that meet your wishes.

Since the data bank is automated, the required information is issued to the applicant almost instantly. If, for some reason, it is impossible to quickly obtain information about children, the Operator is obliged to provide this information to the candidate for adoptive parents no later than 10 days from the date of acceptance of the application from him.

If a child matching your requirements cannot be found, you must leave a request to find such a child, and the guardianship authorities must notify the candidate for adoption of the appearance of a child that meets his request. In any case, the Operator is obliged every month to inform the candidate for adoptive parents about the presence / absence of information about the required child in the data bank, as well as to acquaint the candidate with the newly received questionnaires of children.

After the candidate for adoptive parents chooses a specific child, the regional operator issues him a referral to visit the child in the institution where he is. In an institution, a candidate for adoptive parents is required to provide complete information about the child, to acquaint him with the history of his life (show a personal file), to talk about his state of health, to acquaint him with a medical record, to talk about the features of development at the moment.

If the child is not suitable for you, you return to the Operator again, fill out a special application on the results of meeting the child, and the specialist (operator) issues you a new referral to visit another child. Legislative acts do not limit the number of referrals issued to visit children. A candidate for adoptive parents has the right to choose a child for an arbitrarily long time until the child is found by joint efforts.

In addition to the above, there is another option for finding a child. A candidate for adoptive parents can apply to any guardianship and guardianship authority in our country, to a regional operator or to the Ministry of Education with a request to select a child. The law provides for the possibility of selecting a child from a regional or federal data bank not by the candidate for adoptive parents, but by the guardianship authorities. The need for this may arise if the candidate for adoptive parents does not have time to visit various authorities (or other reasons). To do this, you must fill out a request form with a request for assistance in the selection of a child, which will be sent by guardianship to a regional (federal) operator. After receiving a response from the operator and selected questionnaires, guardianship will invite the candidate for adoptive parents to familiarize themselves with them and issue a referral to visit the child. However, you should remember that this method of searching for a child can take quite a long time, despite the fact that the conclusion on the possibility of being an adoptive parent is valid only for a year, and the medical certificate is only 3 months.

When contacting a regional operator, keep in mind that data for children under one year old is updated once a year, and for older children even less often: once every three years. In addition, new information about children enters the database very late and very irregularly. Therefore, the information offered to you may be very outdated: the child may be cured of these diseases, or (unfortunately) acquire new ones, and may even find a family.

According to the idea of ​​the drafters of the law, the Data Bank was created not to establish a state monopoly on information about orphans, but to expand the possibilities of finding children and providing a chance to find a family for any orphaned child. Thus, the local guardianship authority does not have the right to archive the child's case after the transfer of his questionnaire to the regional data bank, he is obliged to continue to make every effort to find a family for him. Thus, by transferring the child's questionnaire to higher levels of the Data Bank, the circle of searching for his family is expanding.

There are other ways to find a child. So, candidates for adoptive parents can independently apply to children's institutions, bypassing the Data Bank. However, this method very much depends on the good will of the leaders of children's institutions, as well as the perseverance and willingness to spend the time and effort of future parents.

Children from 0 to 3-4 years old from maternity wards, hospitals, abandoned, taken away from unfortunate parents, get to children's institutions for younger children (children's homes). They stay in orphanages until they are 4 years old, but sometimes they are detained up to 5 years (mainly for medical reasons). Children's homes are medical facilities and are of a general type or specialized, for example, for children born to infected mothers, or for children with congenital pathologies.

Older children are transferred to pre-school or so-called “family-type” orphanages, where siblings aged 4 to 18 are brought up together. From preschool orphanages, children who have reached school age are transferred to an orphanage (or boarding school), where they live until they reach adulthood. Children living in orphanages attend the nearest district school; children who ended up in a boarding school study in a special school attached to the boarding school. Ordinary orphanages and boarding schools are under the jurisdiction of educational authorities, while special and correctional ones may belong to various organizations related to social protection, health care, the Red Cross, or other non-governmental organizations. However, the vast majority of orphanages for children over 3 years of age are run by educational authorities.

Children's medical institutions - hospitals and children's homes - are more closed to strangers than children's homes and boarding schools. This is due to the peculiarities of the regimen in children's medical institutions, the age of children, the large number of children, their weakness, fears of introducing an infection and provoking a local epidemic. In this regard, visits to such establishments by outsiders are limited. In addition, employees of such institutions do not have the right to disclose information about children to outsiders, and a direct request to show children suitable for adoption is most often met with a justified refusal. However, the head of the children's institution has the right to inform the person who has come where he should apply if he decides to adopt a child.

Another thing is that in a number of children's institutions (especially in the outback), work in which is often the only source of income for employees, and the transfer of children to families carries the threat of unemployment, the management of children's institutions does not seek to transfer children to families. In order to reduce the number of children placed for adoption, employees of such institutions may refer to various non-existent instructions or intimidate potential adoptive parents with the “problems” of adopted children. Some employees sincerely believe that it is better for a child to be in a state institution, since there is better care, timely food and treatment are provided, and it is impossible to control the living conditions of the child in the family. Others, having in their experience unsuccessful examples of the transfer of children to families, fear that the child may not be well in the family, and the adoptive parents will return him back.

Another way to find your child is to go to work for a while in a childcare facility. This method is very reliable, but very difficult morally.

If there is already a candidate for a child, perhaps you met him while visiting your child in the hospital, assisting a children's institution, or this is the child of neighbors, acquaintances, then you do not need to receive referrals for him, because you already know him. Therefore, sometimes the demand of the district guardianship authority is to go and get a referral for this child from the Regional Operator, allegedly due to the fact that they have already transferred his data there, illegally, they keep the file on the child, and in order to remove data about this child from Bank of the data, it is enough for them to notify the Regional Operator - they can do this using a standard notification - more details about this are described in the Answer of the Head of the Department for Social and Pedagogical Support and Rehabilitation of Children of the Ministry of Education of the Russian Federation No. 20 / 26-12 dated January 13, 2003.

First of all, we would like to draw your attention to the specifics of diagnosing the state of physical and mental health of children in children's institutions. Unfortunately, very often it is not objective and complete enough, which leads either to the failure to detect diseases in children, or to overdiagnosis, when non-existent or already compensated diseases are recorded in a child. Quite often, overdiagnosis occurs in specialized institutions, when a child is diagnosed with "mental retardation in the degree of debility" or "delayed psychoverbal (psychomotor) development" in order to justify his stay in this institution before the governing bodies. As surveys of pupils conducted by independent psychiatrists and psychologists show, sometimes up to 25-30% of children in specialized institutions have incorrect diagnoses. This is due to the fact that employees working with such children have additional payments of about 20% to the basic salary.

Therefore, we advise you not to be afraid of "terrible" diagnoses in orphans, especially those recorded in the anamnesis (for example, "perinatal encephalopathy", "organic damage to the central nervous system", "hydrocephalic-hypertensive syndrome" and others). Remember that many malformations compensate with age. For example, such a defect in the heart as an “open oval window”, which is often found in premature babies, disappears. We advise you to choose a child based not on papers, but to meet him personally, look at him, get to know him, and only after that make a final decision.

The choice of a child can be quite strongly influenced by the information about him/her that you hear from the specialists of the children's institution. In turn, the reliability of the information given to you will be affected by the impression you yourself make on the employees who receive you. Here the saying “they will meet by their clothes” is appropriate. If the chief doctor or director liked you, then at first they will tell you about what this child is good for, how handsome, capable, obedient he is, and they will say about shortcomings or diseases in passing, without focusing on this. If, for some subjective reason, the employees of the children's institution do not want the child to become a member of your family, then in the first place in the description of the child will be his illnesses and shortcomings, and the merits will be mentioned in passing.

Besides the age and health of the child, you should definitely pay attention to the history of his life, find out where and how long he was before adoption. Remember that the presence (or absence) of maternal care has a huge impact on the development of the baby. A three-year-old kid who grew up even in a bad family is very different from a peer who was brought up from birth in a good children's institution. Children who have been in an institution for a long time differ in development from their "home" peers and may not psychologically correspond to their biological age, which makes them seem younger than their peers.

Due to poor nutrition of the mother during pregnancy, unfavorable lifestyle, complicated childbirth, many children are often born prematurely and get sick more often, which is expressed in malnutrition and stunting. Outwardly, they also seem younger than the children who ended up in the institution after some time of living in the family. Poor and malnutrition leads to stunting and underweight, rickets, and in older children removed from the family. The lag of older children can be easily seen by the teeth, which are either translucent, with horizontal relief stripes just above the cutting edge, or small and damaged.

However, quite often the choice of a child is influenced not by the history of development and state of health, but by his appearance. This is how one of the adoptive parents describes her feelings and the choice she made.

“They gave us a referral to choose a child, and we rushed to one of the orphanages. If only you knew what a shame and torment it is to choose, examine and die from embarrassment in front of these kids from the fact that you won’t take them!!! We stayed there for a long time, I fiddled a lot with those with whom it was possible, they are nice, small, but I didn’t feel about any of them that this was my son. The husband almost cried in general, clenched his jaw, so his jaws went. Terribly hard and ashamed, ashamed, ashamed! They felt like pigs.

The next day, without any call or prior arrangements, we were already at the door of another orphanage. They accepted us and, having heard that we needed a boy under eight months old, they immediately declared - there is just one for you! And they called such a telling surname that it became clear that this baby needed to be pulled out of here, and everything should be quickly changed for him. While we were being led along the corridor to his group, we had already decided that there would be no repetition of yesterday's elections - we would take this child, whatever he was. To be honest, I was very afraid that I would not feel anything again. But I also firmly knew that I could not refuse any more. The husband said the day before that he hopes for my intuition and is not capable of choosing in such matters at all! We were asked to wait as the kids were running out of breakfast. Those who had already eaten ran up to the door on their walkers and greeted us kindly. They were extremely pretty, very lively, but not one of them was written - He. Yesterday was repeated, with the only difference that I knew that today I would not refuse. So we squatted in front of them and mentally asked the kids who they were. And then the nanny finished feeding the last one and they told us - this one! He roared, got angry, tried to return the bottle, but both of us simply felt relieved from the heart - tearful, angry, but Ours. It is inexplicable, but there is such a Feeling! Then we were little worried about the data read from his card (although during the neonatal period the baby underwent a very serious operation) - we thought about how to take him home as soon as possible.

Someone adopts a child after seeing a photo in a newspaper or on the Internet, watching a story about an orphanage on TV, or hearing from a doctor friend about an orphan who has been admitted to a hospital for treatment.

As you can see, there are many ways to choose a child, and which one you choose depends on many, sometimes random, circumstances.

Having decided on this step, carefully consider your possibilities (physical and material). If you want to take a child under one year old, determine if you can quit your job and take care of raising a child at home until at least three years old. It is worth inquiring about the prices of clothes for babies and other accessories he needs.

If you are planning to take an older child, think about who will take him to kindergarten and pick him up, who will see him off and pick him up from school.

It is also worth thinking about what traits of the child's character will suit you (and vice versa, will annoy you): slowness, slowness or, on the contrary, restlessness, talkativeness. Best of all, if he is not your opposite, since overactive children are difficult to withstand for a long time people with a calm character, and calm children annoy impulsive adults with their slowness.

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