Family to Family Adoptions Inc, Adoptive Families, Birth Mothers

We are proud to announce that on June 1, 2013, we expanded our agency to include a Foster Care Program!  This program will allow us to serve more children, as well as individuals & families that want to assist in meeting the needs of children in transition. Through our foster care program, we will be serving children ages 0 – 17 that require a substitute home due to abuse and or neglect.  To become a foster parent, you must:

• be at least 23 years of age
• have a clear criminal background check,
• have enough space to accommodate additional individuals in your home
• genuinely care for the well being of children and
• be willing to provide a safe, loving and nurturing environment for children in your community

Family to Family is conducting foster care informational meetings now! You can contact the office at 281-342-4092 to make an appointment or send us a message through our Contact Us page.

Family to Family is a 501(c)(3) non-profit licensed agency founded by experienced professionals in the child advocacy field. We were licensed by the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services as a Child-Placing Agency on February 14, 2001. Since opening, we have placed 340 children with adoptive families. While we are delighted with what we have been able to accomplish to date, we understand that there is a need that is not being filled by adoption alone… hence, our new program!

Recently our agency placed a sibling group of four children for adoption. We had a huge response to our need for families for these children and lots of support during this process. Who knew that a simple post on our Facebook page would have potential adoptive families inquiring about these children from many different places as far as Australia and The Philippines. Over several weeks, our staff worked together to find homes for these children and make decisions for each of them based on their needs. I am happy to report that we have placed all of the children with wonderful adoptive families.

Family to Family is a private, non-profit agency that specializes in making adoption plans for birth parents and adoptive families of mostly newborns. On occasion our agency will place an older child or a sibling group. In placing a sibling group or an older child, the adoption agency will require a current home study.  What is a current home study? A current home study is a report completed by a licensed social worker approving the adoptive parents for adoption and the report is dated within the last year. If your home study is not current then you cannot be considered as an adoptive family for a child that needs an immediate placement.  It is important to have and maintain that home study to be considered for an older child or sibling group placement for adoption.

There is a difference between a home study done for a domestic adoption and a home study for foster care. While we can use a home study for foster care, the adoptive family first needs to find out if their foster care agency is willing to release their home study to the adoption agency for placement of a child. Throughout the process of placing this sibling group, there were many inquiries from families where their foster care agencies were not able to provide the home study or informed the family that they could not take placement from another agency while providing foster placements.  It is important if you are a foster family to find out if this is a possibility for you before inquiring on a placement.

Placement of an older child or sibling group through Family to Family is a voluntary relinquishment of parental rights. The birth parents have made a decision to make an adoption plan for their child in order to provide a life for that child that they cannot provide. This means that children that are placed through our agency do not come with monetary reimbursements or stipends. Adopting a child is providing a permanent home for a child and the adoptive family is responsible and willing to provide for this child as they would their own child. In the event of a placement through a private adoption agency such as Family to Family, in most cases there is a fee associated with adopting a child or a sibling group. To learn more about our fees, please feel free to contact us.

We are so appreciative to all of the families that inquired about the sibling group we recently placed. It is encouraging to know that there are so many families out there that are open to providing homes for children when needed. Thank you to all of you!

A few weeks ago at a dinner with a group of clients who had traveled from out of state for a week-long meeting, I ended up sitting next to a woman whom I’d never met.  As dinner got started and she and I were talking, she apologized for checking her phone every couple of minutes.

 “I’m so sorry,” she said, “but my husband and I have been in the adoption process for three years and just two days ago, we met a birth mom and we matched!”   I couldn’t believe how lucky I was to have just met this person at such an exciting and vulnerable point in her life.  I eagerly listened to her story, pumping her for details by sharing some of our family’s story.  She and her husband had just about given up hope (how many times had I been there?!) when this birth mom asked to meet them and then asked them to raise her baby, which was due to be born in less than three weeks.  My new friend wasn’t quite sure what to feel – after waiting for her baby for so long, she was afraid to hope, yet she couldn’t help herself.  While I tried to be sensitive to her need to keep her emotions at bay, my excitement spilled over as she told me her story and that of the baby’s birth mother.  By the end of that dinner, I’d made a new friend for life.

The next day as we attended meetings together, I rode shotgun on her emotional roller coaster and we talked about our families and about babies through the end of dinner the second day of our meetings.  Sharing all of these moments with her took me straight back to the weeks before our oldest son was born and I got to relive for my friend the moment that the nurse placed our son in my arms and said, “Here is your baby.”  I also relived every moment that I got to spend with my son’s birth mother and appreciated again what a strong, smart, brave woman she was.

All of this happened, coincidentally, the week before our oldest son’s fifth birthday.  Since my new friend had to stay in town over the weekend (away from her husband, who was at home, anxiously prepping the nursery), she graciously agreed to join us for his birthday party at a moon bounce gym with twenty other five year-old boys.  It was such an honor to be able to show her what our family had become in five years and to give her a glimpse of what her family might be doing five years from now.

As I write this post, my friend’s baby is due to be born in three days.  The baby’s birth mother has invited my friend to be in the delivery room with her and I’m anxiously awaiting the news that they are headed to the hospital.  My friend texted me today, “So close to the finish line… We are happy and we are terrified!” 

That sounds just like a new mom to me.

Written by Adoptive Mother, Kate

The process of adoption and the biological family choosing the adoptive family for their child and placing their child with them is the most obvious reason of our agency name. The agency also has a smaller client base and we know each one of our families, both biological and adoptive, and their expectations and needs of the adoption process. We feel that adoptive families and birth parents should feel connected to the staff and the adoption process and not feel like a number on a waiting list. Our relationship with our families extends beyond the placement and routinely we receive email, visits and pictures with updates and are able to see how the adoptive families and children as well as the birth families are doing for years after placement. We also look forward every year to our Annual Adoptive Family Picnic in the Fall where our families and adopted children come together to meet, catch up and have some fun. As an agency we always say that our biggest compliment is when an adoptive family or a birth family choose to work with us again or refer someone to the agency.

However, the agency staff feels like there is another meaning behind the name. Since the inception of the agency in 2001 the Family to Family staff has been working together.  We are not just coworkers that show up for a job every day but we are our own little family. We have been there for each other through births of our children and grandchildren, marriages, loss of family and coworkers and many other life experiences. Most of our families have shared in these experiences with us because of the relationship we form with them during the adoption process. If you are considering adoption, we invite you to attend one of our conferences, talk to some of our other families, and meet the staff and become part of our “family” too. We look forward to hearing from you and helping you with your adoption process.

We are beginning our 11th year placing newborns with wonderful adoptive parents and as the children grow up, the questions and updates we receive from their parents are changing with the children’s developmental age.  We recently got an update from an adoptive mom who is wondering how much her cherished daughter looks like the birth mother….with time the picture of the biological mother in the mind’s eye of the adoptive mother is fading and she can’t quite bring it into focus now.  The adoptive mom states how much she regrets not getting pictures when she met the birth mother….but she didn’t  think about it at the time.

The process of meeting the birth family is such an emotional experience for  some families that even though we encourage them to keep their cameras handy, the family fails to take pictures.  You may never get another chance to preserve this information for your child. 

We encourage adoptive families  and birth families to develop a relationship during each and every moment they are together so that over time trust can build up.  The liklihood of the biological families staying in contact with you or the agency increases  the closer to each other you become.  We realize it is scary during this part of the process, but it is through that relationship as a new entity…the Extended Adoptive Family…that the real needs of the adoptive child can be met.  All adoptees want to know what their biological parents looked like and what dreams and wishes the biological parent had for them at placement.  You only get one chance to learn that information and even though you think you will never forget…..all experiences fade with age and you can’t quite bring it into focus anymore.  Please document each meeting with your child’s biological family members each time you meet and through out the process…..it may be the only chance you get to preserve that for your child.

We  recently received an email update from a former adoptive family to let us know they had moved to another state.  She recounted that the precocious 4 1/2 year old she adopted as a newborn through us is now the tallest in her class with a great sense of humor, a beautiful smile and loves to sing and dance.  In fact, when her Pre-K teacher recently asked the class what  they wanted to be when they grew up, she cheerfully replied that she wanted to be President of the United States and after that she wants to be a Ninja Turtle!

Which one would she be?

She was putting us on notice to watch for this bright little girl as a future President and to be on the watch for her political career!

We love to get updates from families because we can share in the joys and triumphs that these babies are experiencing in their  forever homes with their mommies and/or daddies.  These types of updates reinforce the staff and me for the next year’s work and show us that it is all worth it.

The dates have been set for 2013 for adoption conferences, adoptive parent trainings, and the annual adoptive family picnic.  Please check out our Events and Schedule page on our website to get those dates and times.  If you are interested in becoming a foster parent, please contact us for more information.

Do you like our website?

Tell us about it. We are constantly working to improve our site and provide you, our readers, with useful and interesting information about adoption, abortion alternatives, parenting (particularly in adoptive families), and the adoption process. We would like to hear from you about how we are doing.

Go to our Contact Us form on the site and send us a message telling us what you like about what we are doing, what you find particularly useful, how easy it is to find what you need on the site, or what information you would like to have available, but cannot find.

Are you interested in adopting? Please join us on September 15, 2012 at our office in Richmond and learn more about completing your family through adoption. You will also have the opportunity to meet adoptive families and biological parents that have been through the process and hear their stories. Check out our events page for all of the details and be sure to RSVP to 281-342-4042 or max@fam2fam.org.

An adoption workshop has been added to our events and schedule page for April 28, 2012 in Arlington, Virginia. If you are interested in adopting or would like to know some more information about the adoption process and our agency and reside in Virginia or the surrounding areas, please join us for this workshop. The workshop will be held at the home of one of our adoptive families. Our Executive Director will be there along with some adoptive families that have completed adoptions through our agency. If you would like to attend, please call our office at 281-342-4042 or email Maxine Seiler at max@fam2fam.org to RSVP and get the location’s address.

We want to thank our hostess and all of the families that will be there for this workshop. We look forward to meeting some new adoptive families. If you are interested in possibly hosting a workshop in your area, please contact us.