The agency's response

Oh yeah, I suppose I should mention the response I received from my first adoption agency inquiry:

As far as age, we do not have restrictions.  The thing to know with domestic infant is that birth mothers (and fathers) look at a family’s profile and photo books and choose them based on aspects they connect to, which we can’t predict.   The most common ones we hear are other children in home, living in city or country, and age.  Since most birth parents are late teens or early twenties, they tend to choose younger parents they feel they can relate to.

I can tell you a little bit about domestic infant adoption: most agencies have you pay to be in their “pool” of waiting parents.  We are currently not accepting any more adoptive parents into our own HOPE pool because we are just not having a great volume of birth parents.  And with too many waiting, it gets very frustrating and disappointing. 

What many of our domestic-adopting families do is get their home study done through us and then adopt through another agency—usually in states with lesser wait times, such as Florida or Texas.  (No matter what type of adoption you do, you’ll need a home study from a licensed agency in your area, such as HOPE—this is the process of social worker interviews, background checks, references, and paperwork).  But most domestic infant families are coming to us having found their own matches, whether through marketing themselves (there are webinars/resources for this) or “a friend of a friend” situation.  If you would work with another agency on the child-finding end, there are no duplication of services.

If you’d like, I can put you in contact with our social services manager if you’d like to talk to her about more options, whether other domestic infant programs we would recommend, other programs you might be interested in, or possible next steps.  I could also tell you more about the home study process, which takes about 6 months or so.  Some families begin that right away if they know they want to adopt but aren’t sure what program they are going to do. 

If you’re not sure about domestic infant, we also have a Minnesota Waiting Child adoption program, which is kids who are in the foster care system under state guardianship.  They’re usually over the age of six, maybe in a sibling group, and have significant emotional, physical or behavioral special needs.