Foster Care Adoption

Foster Care Adoption Lawyer

When a child who cannot live with parents or a relative, foster care provides a temporary home with a licensed foster parent until the court makes a permanent placement plan.

When parents lose their parental rights, children in foster care can become eligible for adoption, either by their foster parents or by families willing to adopt from the foster system. You should have an experienced foster care adoption attorney at your side. Contact Mills Adoption Law today to schedule a 15-minute consultation call with Attorney Bobby Mills.

How Mills Adoption Law Can Help You and Your Family Adopt

Why would a family consider adopting a child in foster care? Some common situations when a family chooses to adopt from foster care include:

• The adopting family is less restrictive about a child’s age, race, gender, or special needs.
• The foster parent wants to adopt a child whose parents already lost their parental rights.
• The adopting family wants a more affordable adoption through foster care.
• The adopting family wants to give a home to a child without a family.

Adopting a Child from Foster Care

Children in foster care have often experienced trauma and may express behavioral issues, insecurity, and mental health issues like anxiety or depression. However, these children need compassionate homes to feel safe and loved. Children eligible for adoption in foster care often include children with special needs, teenagers, minority children, and sibling groups.

To be eligible to adopt a child in North Carolina, you must be at least 18 years of age, pass a background check, get fingerprinted, and possibly undergo training, depending on the foster care adoption agency with whom you work.

All adoptive parents must also complete a home study before adopting a child, whether a foster care adoption or another type of adoption. For more information on the complexities of adopting a child from foster care, contact a foster care adoption attorney at Mills Adoption Law.

Adopting a Child as a Foster Parent

Sometimes, a child or sibling group in foster care becomes eligible for adoption if their birth parents lose their parental rights and another family member cannot care for them. In these cases, your local Department of Social Services (DSS) may consider you first to adopt a child in your care as a foster parent.

Foster parents protect children in foster care from returning to unfit homes that could put their health, well-being, or lives at risk. If you want to adopt a child in your care through North Carolina’s foster system, you should retain an experienced foster parent adoption attorney.

At Mills Adoption Law, we want to help caring foster parents adopt children to provide a safe, loving home for at-risk children in North Carolina.

What Training Do Adoptive Parents of Foster Children Undergo Before Adopting?

You may need to complete additional training for your foster care adoption agency to allow you to adopt a foster child in their care.

Some agencies even require non-foster parent families looking to adopt to take the same certification course they require their foster parents to take.

Foster parents must take a 30-hour certification course called “Trauma-Informed Partnering for Safety and Permanence/Model Approach to Partnerships in Parenting.”

Some agencies require prospective adoptive parents to take the same certification course before being eligible to adopt a child from foster care.

Contact a North Carolina Adoption Attorney for Your Foster Care Adoption

Adoption is a complex legal process that can be costly and time-consuming. While we often get questions about how long it could take or how much it will cost to adopt a child, each case is different.

North Carolina requires a six-month home study procedure before parents can adopt a child if they are not foster parents. The process could be different for foster parents because they must undergo certification, interviews, and home inspections.

For help from a foster care adoption attorney in Raleigh, NC, turn to Mills Adoption Law. We have over 35 years of experience in real adoption cases, including adoption through foster care. Contact us today to schedule a 15-minute call with Attorney Bobby Mills.