Question: My husband and I are seriously considering domestic infant adoption. In my research I have found grants are available for people who want to adopt. We make decent money, but do not want to spend all of our savings on adoption fees when we know expenses will only go up when we have a child. Will filling out applications for grants be a waste of time for us or will they consider us even though we make decent money?
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Please pardon any errors, this is an automated transcript.
Welcome everyone to Weekend Wisdom by Creating a Family. This is our short form podcast where we answer your questions. It drops,
as you would imagine, on the weekends, given its name. I'm Dawn Davenport, and we want to answer your specific questions. We'll try to do it in five or so minutes, maybe 10, depends on how talkative I am.
So this is a reminder to send in your questions. You can send them in to info @creatingafamily .org. Today's question is this,
"My husband and I are seriously considering domestic infant adoption. In my research, I have found grants are available for people who want to adopt. We make decent money, but do not want to spend all of our savings on adoption fees when we know expenses will only go up when we have a child.
Will filling out applications for grants be a waste of time for us, or will they consider us even though we make good money? That's a really good question. There are a number of adoption grants available and in my experience,
generally speaking, grants are available primarily for a number of categories. One, adopting kids with significant special needs. There are grants that are often set aside for that or adopting kids who have been waiting a long time or are older.
Also, there are some grants that are just specific to certain types of adoptions. Like for example, some would focus on international adoption and grants are often focused on parents with limited financial means.
And sometimes grants are specific to parents of a specific religion or religious belief or require that you sign a statement that you have certain religious beliefs. And some grants give preference to families that have no children.
Now, of course, it's always possible that you would receive a grant, but I understand your concerns about whether it's worth your time, and if they charge an application fee, your money. You also have to balance your time and money with how much you can realistically expect to receive through a grant.
I know this is not necessarily what you're wanting to hear as my answer. Keep in mind that there are a lot of different ways to raise money and creating a family. family has a section on our website for affording adoption and we cover a lot of options there including grants and loans.
Go to our website, creatingafamily .org, hover over the word adoption and click on topics or adoption topics and you will see affording adoption. I think it's at the very top.
I hope this helps and I wish you absolutely the best of luck. Before you leave, I want to thank you for watching. tell you about a resource that we have at Creating a Family. It is an interactive training and support curriculum for foster,
adoptive and kinship families. So if you are running a support group or if you're running trainings or if you're a parent who wants your agency to do this type of training, it's interactive,
it's a facilitated training, there's a lot of discussion. Functions as a support group at times, even if it's a training, you can get more information. about it at parentsupportgroups .org.
That's parentsupportgroups .org, or you can go to our website, creatingafamily .org, hover over the word "training" and find it that way. We hope that you have enjoyed listening to this week's Weekend Wisdom.
If you liked it, please tell a friend to subscribe to the Creating a Family dot org podcast, and this will magically appear in in their feed.