Domestic Adoption Timeline

We will be offering one-to-one telephone consultation sessions to explore your concerns and eligibility to adopt. There is a fee for this service and online registration is required. After determining your eligibility, the next step is to register and attend the two-day adoption training/seminar. Due to precautions of COVID19, many of these will not be in person but will be via ZOOM video. All applicants are required to be present for both days and to be full participating members in the workshops. The application stage is next (a multi-faced process that often takes 6-8 months to complete); and then the homestudy (aka home assessment report - which usually takes between 3-4 months. You need to be approved for every step of the process. Once approved to be an adopting couple, your name is placed on that Agency’s list of eligible families. The length of this list vary among agencies. The process is also competitive in that several eligible adopting families are presented to each birthcouple, or individual, and they identify any potential match.

Factors that will affect the time that a couple might remain on an agency list before being matched include:

- The number of couples on any given Agency’s list
- How selective the adopting couple is when completing the ‘child desired’ area.

We tell families to expect to wait up to 3 years but to prepare for less (we have had several families chosen by a birthfamily and placed with the child within 1.5 years and less)!