Open Adoptions vs Closed Adoptions

Open adoptions have been a new part of domestic adoptions. Previously, adoptions were almost all closed with little to no contact between the birth family and the adoptive family.

*Closed adoption is defined as an adoption where there is no interaction of any kind between biological families and adoptive families. This includes no exchanging of identifying information such as names, addresses, family history and culture as well as medical history.

*Open adoption is defined as an adoption in which both the biological and adoptive families have exchanged, in varying degrees, personal information and have the option of contact.

There are many benefits to open adoption, but a big benefit is having access to medical history. This is very generous on the part of the biological family because it's personal, but when you go to the doctor's office and they ask for medical history for your parents or your grandparents, it matters. Genetics affect your health and it's so helpful to provide the doctor with a history.

Another benefit is that statistics show that adoptive children want to know about their biological background. And an open adoption makes that road more possible.

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Explaining Adoption Costs

An adoption in Idaho can vary in cost depending on the type (foster, etc) but with the agency we are using, the average cost is about $21,000 to $24,000. These funds go to our agency to cover their important work in the process. Here are the costs for our current adoption with descriptions for each part. Registration Fee ($250): This covers the paperwork to sign up. Training ($500): This covers the two days of training(~12 hours) that we received at the agency in Boise. Home study ($600): We are assigned a local case worker who comes and inspects our home to ensure that everything is safe: baby proofed, smoke alarms, etc. The caseworker also helps us compile all the documents the agency needs to approve our home study. The paperwork is about the size of a small book (~100 pages). The caseworker reads through and checks everything for us. Infant Waiting list ($4000): This is for the waiting list and for help compiling our profile book. The profile book is a description of...

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God's Surprising Grace

“His compassions fail not. They are new every morning.” (Lam 3:22-23) God’s grace is constant and steady. Every day holds a lot of common and ordinary graces that everyone shares: breath, life, food, clothes, sleep, work, and laughter. And then some days God offers us a large dose and it reminds us of how surprising all his gifts are. We don’t own any of our days or any of our breathes. They are all gifts and they all come unbidden. God is superabundant and he just gives. Kate and I have been waiting and praying for our adoption for over three years. It was a long wait. Life was busy and God was very kind to us, providing us with friends to pray for us and also giving us the funds for the adoption itself. We were very thankful for those things. Very regularly we would have people ask about our adoption and tell us they were praying for us. Those quick conversations were encouraging little reminders from God. It was a whirlwind when God matched us with Pilgrim. We found out about the ba...

Sumpter Family Adoption

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