Once we had chosen the right method of adoption, we still had another decision to make. Did we want to use an agency or become foster parents with Alameda County. We still had a lot to learn about the process involved with each direction, and how each track affected the amount of support that we would have along the way as well as the access to kids that we would have.
Our first line of research was the Berkeley Parents Network (BPN). There is so much info there, it is a little overwhelming, although it is pretty well organized. To this day, I am not sure that I have read everything, though. My friend T- had heard great things about an organization that I will call “B-”. The positive things were confirmed by BPN, so we decided to check it out by attending the orientation together. We knew they were close to our house and when we decided to walk to the orientation (it is a 10 minute walk!), we realized how close it was. This was a draw, but ultimately certainly didn’t become a deciding factor.
T- lives in a co-op house and was concerned with the scrutiny that she would have to go though to become a foster parent. She was not feeling like it was a very realistic option for her. Unfortunately, B- wasn’t really very excited to work with her either. Each person in T-’s house would have to be fingerprinted. B- said that they were looking for homes that were as stable and simple as possible, since kids in the foster system already have a lot of complications to deal with.
We, on the other hand, really liked the guy giving the presentation. He made us excited about our future and made us want to sign up with B-. We loved how they embraced transracial and queer families and looking at the people around us, we felt right at home. During that orientation, we heard the story of a family that had previously done a difficult adoption from Kasakhstan and all of our signs were saying “go” to working with B-.
The catch was that we weren’t quite ready for a “go”. We still had at least 6 months before we could start…we had a lot to do logistically to be ready. We filled out a card which explained this and also told them that we weren’t able to participate in the upcoming “PRIDE” training. At the end of the meeting, they discreetly said that a new social worker would be taking any new clients that they got, not the charismatic and articulate person that gave the presentation.
That is when our relationship with B- started to sour. We almost immediately got a phone call encouraging us to attend the upcoming training, which we already said we would NOT be attending. I nicely said “no, thank you”…this is our timeline and we will let you know if anything changes. Well, I do not think that this woman even knew who we are or cared…we became just a phone call on her list and she called us regularly. It became a bit of a joke, actually. Each time, I re-explained our situation until I was fed up enough to tell them to get lost; that we would call them.
Next, we decided to go to the orientation for Alameda County. We heard that by going directly through the county, we would get first choice of kids that come through Alameda County CPS (which is true). We were sold on the visions that they implanted in our heads of walking into the courtroom hand-in-hand with the bio-mom supporting the best life for the child. We loved the concept of concurrent planning; the first placement of the kid is the last placement…as soon as the kid is in the system, they go straight into a home that is willing to adopt.
Then we met B- and P-, who were neighbors of some friends and had adopted several years ago. We had a lovely tea with them and their boys and we heard about their experience working with the agency, I will call “A-”. During our conversation, we were strikingly attached to our plan of working with the county. But what really struck us was how great B-P were. We left feeling that they were so much like us, just a few years ahead and that they were ideal models for us. We loved how they talked about parenting and how they interacted with “their guys”.
We started to get scared…really scared. Hearing about the reality of doing this and about all of the support that A- gave B-P made us scared of doing it without the support. We decided that we wanted to find parents to give hearty recommendations for fost-adopt through the county. We made a number of phone calls and never received the references that we were asking for. The only thing that we were offered were social workers who could tell us the pros and cons of working directly with the county, which we felt like we knew already. And were learning very viscerally as we weren’t getting our phone calls returned.
I also quickly realized that I did not want to be a foster mom. I was happy to be a foster-mom for the opportunity to adopt, but I couldn’t bear losing my kids so that they could go back to their bio parents. Of course, if that was the best for the kids, I would want that. But, it was worth it for me to have more difficult kids or a more complicated situation in order to have them be mine and stay mine. I could imagine losing kids once, but not more and the county is asking you to take a big risk with concurrent planning.
As soon as we went to the A- orientation, we felt right at home. There are a number of people on staff who have personal relationships with adoption, so we got to hear their stories. The staff also immediately remembered our names and our specific concerns and called us the next day to answer our questions. We were immediately assigned a social worker who interviewed us and made recommendations of ways that we could prepare ourselves before we were ever invited to their training.
They totally got into our personal life, we realized that we aren’t really used to not being trusted or to having our decisions dissected. But eventually, we got through their process and we feel lucky to be working with them.
