Foster Adopt Program

About the Foster-Adopt Program

The Foster-Adopt Program is available through the State of Washington in King County only at this time. If you live outside of King County and would like to be licensed for the Foster-Adopt Program, then you will need to work with a Private Agency who offers this service. Foster families who live outside of King County and who wish to adopt, will need to speak with their licensor for more information on this process. 

How Do I Know If The Foster-Adopt Program Is The Right Program For Me?

1. Are you ready to handle the Legal Risks?

There are a lot of legal risks involved with the adoption of foster children. Most foster children are NOT yet legally free at the time of placement into a foster-adopt home. In many instances, the children’s social workers are still working on reunification services with the child’s birth parents and the foster children are having visitations with their birth parents or relatives. The court will require the DCFS social worker to make reasonable attempts to reunify a dependent child until the termination of parental rights occurs. This means that foster-adopt families MUST be supportive and willing to work with the reunification plan until their foster child becomes legally free.

Although the best efforts are made to screen the placement referrals and to place the children with low legal risk into foster-adopt homes, we can NOT guarantee if and when the child will become legally free. Therefore, foster-adopt families must remember that they are foster parents before they are adoptive parents and they must work with the reunification plan until the child becomes legally free.

Foster-adopt families must prepare themselves for the scenario of their foster child returning to the birth family. While it is very difficult, foster-adopt families must rise above their own sense of pain and loss, and be happy that they “played a part in something beautiful” as one experienced foster-adopt family puts it. Some of our foster-adopt families have become “extended” family members to their former foster child and the birth family and maintain a positive relationship with them!

2. Are you ready to handle Special Needs?

All foster children have “special needs” by virtue of being removed from the birth family. While there is a broad spectrum of special needs in both “types and degrees,” it is safe to say that many foster children have been removed from birth parents because their drug and/or alcohol addiction hindering their abilities to parent in a safe home environment. Each child is different and we CANNOT predict the long-term affects of drugs/alcohol on any child. Some children with pre-natal drugs/alcohol can grow up to be college graduates with successful careers, while some children with the same special needs can continue to struggle academically and socially. Therefore, foster-adopt families must ask themselves if they are prepared to deal with the child’s lifelong and/or unforeseen special needs. Having said that, we are encouraged by the research that demonstrates that these children can have successful outcomes with early interventions and a stable, nurturing home environment.

If you decide that the Foster-Adopt Program is not an option for you, there are other types of adoption and private agencies that you can work with in the community. For example, an independent infant adoption through a private agency or adoption attorney may work best for a family that feels a need to raise a child from infancy and to be able to ‘claim’ the child in a legal sense immediately following placement. Other families may choose to build or extend their family through international adoption.