wellutah.com

Brandon and Amber: Meet the Robertsons

Published: 04/28/2010 by Bill Brown

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Brandon and Amber Robertson are trying to adopt. Those words are easy to say, but there are years of research, soul searching, patience, anxiety, money and plain old fashioned work contained in them.

Both Brandon and Amber are from Hurricane, Utah. Brandon has lived there all his life, Amber moved there with her family when she was in sixth grade. They met, fell in love, got married, and have been married for seven years. Brandon works as a health care provider, working in a number of areas, from lab work, to urgent care, to family practice. He is currently pursuing his degree in nursing, aiming at becoming a nurse practitioner. He is 25. Amber graduated from beauty school, and currently works as a beautician. She is 27.

Two years after the got married, they decided they wanted to start a family.  That was when they discovered a problem. Infertility.

“The thing is, with infertility, it’s tough. You know, you plan when you want to start your family, and then you get hit with that,” Amber said. “It has been very hard.”

After their discovery, the Robertsons started looking into adoption a little more seriously. The couple had been considering adoption from the start, Amber said. This just gave them the impetus to start researching it seriously. Amber said they are continuing to work on the infertility issue, but still are planning on adopting.

“Even if we have our own kids eventually, we definitely want to have more than one child,” Amber smiled. She added they would most likely continue the adoption process no matter what happened down the road.

Together they started researching adoption. They found the general process for adoption is varied and at times confusing. In general, when a family decides to adopt, they look at the many ways to adopt and choose a path that seems the best to them. Then they need to meet the criteria for adoption. After that, it is a matter of being patient. Wait times can range from six months to years. The most common paths to adoption, they found, were going through an agency, a private adoption, assisted by an adoption lawyer, international adoptions and foster adoptions. 

Private adoptions, assisted by an adoption attorney, happen when both the adoptive family and birth parents decide to complete the adoption process independent of an adoption agency. Attorneys can help guide families through the legal maze of adopting a child, and help them come to agreements with the birth parents about openness of the  adoption and other factors. Most often in this route, the birth parents and adoptive parents will find each other, and then get the adoption attorney involved.

Private agency adoptions provide the same services, plus they help facilitate bringing both birth parents and adoptive parents together. Birth parents will approach an agency, and the agency will help them develop an adoption plan. They will have opportunities to view prospective families for their child. Adoptive parents can register with agencies, who will help them work through fulfilling the requirements to be eligible to adopt. Then, the agency acts as a liaison between the two families. Additionally, agencies often provide assistance and training to both the birth parents and the adoptive families, before and after the adoption, to help ease the transition.

International adoptions are usually done through an accredited agency, according to the State Department Web site. The state department has many rules and additional requirements that need to be complied with before an international adoption can happen. The rules of the country where the adoption will take place must also be satisfied. Then, when an adoption does occur, a visa for the child must be issued so the parents can bring the child back into the United States with them.

Public adoption agencies are usually run by the state, and handle children who have been removed from the home, for reasons of safety and/or neglect. Most often they work with families to help them get their children back. These agencies oversee the foster care programs, and when a court determines reunification is not viable, a plan is developed for the care of the child. When the plan includes adoption, public social service agencies will oversee and facilitate the process. Often, the foster parents will be given the opportunity to adopt the children they are fostering.

Brandon and Amber have been fostering children for about two years now. They have had six different children in their home, from newborns to toddlers, both boys and girls. 

“Last year,” Amber said, “we got to experience our first Christmas with kids.” It was a real eye opening experience for the couple, she added.

In order to be eligible to foster children in this age group, Brandon said, they had to be certified as eligible to adopt.  The reasoning behind this, he added, was to reduce the trauma to the child of being moved from place to place. If for some reason, the birth family is deemed unsuitable for reunification, and adoption is determined to be the best course of action, they could adopt the child they are fostering, and give the child a sense of permanency.  He said so far this has not happened.

The Robertsons have loved and treasured each child they have fostered as if the child were their own, Brandon said, which is hard, knowing they might have to give them up. Amber agreed, and said it was especially heartbreaking with infants. She talked about one baby they picked up from the hospital the day it was born.

“That baby, we had for a month,” Amber said. “To give it up, that was hard.”

“You connect with and treat this child as if it was your own,” Brandon added, “you love and care for it every single day. (Amber) was with the baby all day, every day, and then we had to give it back. Still one month is better than (having to give the child back after) six months, or even two years.”

The Robertsons said they had to go through all the steps to be eligible to adopt. Those steps included a home study, background check, financial checks, physical and other testing.  Areas commonly under scrutiny when determining adoption eligibility include marital status, length of marriage, health issues, disabilities, age, drug/alcohol/tobacco use, fertility status, other children in the house, and religious considerations of the adoptive parents. All adoptive parents have to go through the same processes in order to adopt a child.  What exactly is required to be eligible to adopt varies from state to state.

Brandon said the couple is not just working through the foster program to adopt a child, but are open to many possibilities. He said they have started looking into agencies and also talked with an adoption attorney.  An important factor when considering which route to pursue in adoption is cost, Brandon said.

“It is not like it comes cheap,” Brandon said.

Depending on the route the family choses to follow, Brandon added, costs can range from little or no cost, to more than $40,000, depending on a variety of things. These factors include services provided, travel expenses, birth mother expenses, requirements of the state, and others. Generally speaking, adopting through the foster care system is the least expensive.

Usually when dealing with an agency, an initial fee is required up front, and then a sliding scale of payments can be made over time. Recently, there has been an increase in the availability of resources to help deal with the cost of adoption. These include tax credits, loans, fundraising activities, employer benefits and others.

Once a route has been chosen by an adoptive family, and they have been certified as eligible to adopt, there are many other things to consider. One of these factors they need to look at is the level openness they want in their adoption.

There are two basic types of adoptions, in regards to the contact between the birth parents, the child and adoptive parents. In a closed adoption, the birth parents will have little or no contact with the child and the adoptive family after placement of the child. Open adoptions allow for continuing contact between birth parents, the adopted child and the adoptive parents. There are several levels of open adoptions, ranging from visitation rights, to cards and letters only, to just medical and other family information. The level of openness in the adoption is worked out and agreed to by the adoptive parents and the birth parents with the assistance of an agency or attorney, prior to the adoption taking place.

The Robertsons are not opposed to an open adoption, and said they feel comfortable with the birth parents being able to communicate with the child via cards and letters. Of course, they said, this would be on a case by case basis.

Brandon and Amber feel their experience with the foster children they had had in their home, combined with the training from the state and other sources, has well prepared them to be good adoptive parents. They are looking forward to the day when they have completed the process, and have a child of their own to raise and love, whether through the foster program, an agency, or a private adoption. Until then, they will continue to work towards their goal, and wait.

“We are ready to start our family, and we have been for a while,” Amber said. “So, just starting the process is kind of a relief. You can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel. You know that eventually it is going to lead to something.

For more information, questions, or suggestions about their continuing quest to adopt a child, you can email Brandon and Amber at helpusbuildourfamily@gmail.com. For more information about adoption and what the process involves, visit www.adoptioninformationinstitute.org, www.childwelfare.gov/adoption,  www.adoptioninstitute.org and http://adoption.state.gov