Creating a Family: Talk about Adoption, Foster & Kinship Care

How to Afford Adoption

• Creating a Family • Season 20 • Episode 4

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Are you considering adoption this year but concerned about how to swing the cost? Join us for a practical conversation about managing the expenses of adoption with Ryan Hanlon, PhD, former president of the National Council for Adoption, an adoption advocacy organization dedicated to research, education, and policy in the service of all members of the adoption community.

In this episode, we discuss:

  • How much can hopeful adoptive parents expect to pay for adoption? 
    • Domestic infant adoption? 
    • Adopting from foster care?
    • International adoption?
  • What do these expenses cover? 
  • Most hopeful adoptive families do not have access to large lump sums of $25,000 and upward. So, what are the different options they can pursue to help them afford an adoption?
    • Adoption Subsidies
    • Adoption Grants/Loans
    • Adoption Tax Credit
  • What other methods are available to families to afford adoption? And can you explain the pros and cons of each so families can get a well-rounded view of what to consider?
    • Increase savings / Decrease spending
    • Increase income via a second job, selling things (things you own that you don’t want/need/use; things you can create or offer as services)
    • Employee benefits programs
    • Crowd-sourcing and fundraising, asking for money from family and friends (can be particularly controversial in some circles; take care in sharing the child’s story, etc.) 
  • If a family chooses to fundraise, can you offer a few tips that might help them protect the child’s story and proceed ethically?
  • Also related to fundraising, what types of fundraisers do you see as most effective? (offering a service, event, or experience vs. donations only, etc.)
  • How far in advance do hopeful parents start some of these efforts to afford adoption?
  • Can you explain the Adoption Subsidy in more detail? How do hopeful parents determine if they qualify?
  • Where do they go to learn about financial resources to help them afford adoption?

Resources: 

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Please pardon any errors, this is an automated transcript.

Are you considering adoption to build your family this year? Does the steep price
tag give you pause? We've got some practical information today to help you learn how
to afford adoption. Hello and welcome to Creating a Family, talk about adoption,
foster care, and kinship care. My name is Tracy Whitney. I'm the content director
for creatingafamily .org, and I'm also the host of both of our weekly podcasts, this
long -form interview that drops on Wednesdays, and then we have a short form
interview, practical advice podcast that comes out on Saturdays, and we hope that
you'll check that out. It's called Weekend Wisdom. I am very excited to bring you
this episode today to talk about how to afford adoption with Ryan Hanlon PhD. He is
the president of the National Council for Adoption, which is an adoption advocacy
organization dedicated to research, education and policy in the service of all members
of the adoption community. Before joining NCFA, as we call it in the community,
Ryan spent 13 years working for an adoption agency, and he's also a husband and dad
to four kids. Welcome Ryan to Creatingafamily .org. Hey, thank you,
Tracy. Great to be here again and looking forward to today's conversation. Thanks for
being here. We so appreciate your time. I know you're really a busy guy with all
the work that you're doing on behalf of adoptive families across the country. Well,
thanks for that. It's great work, and we have great partners, don't we? It's great
to link arms with the many professionals that are serving families and children and
the wider community. Yeah, we are very blessed in the positions where we can have
those kinds of partnerships and allies in this work. So I agree. Today's show is
aimed primarily at listeners who are just starting to consider adoption to build
their families or are maybe just kind of diving into the research of all things
adoption. And so we want to start with the basics and build from there. So let's
start with the big question that everybody always asks first, how much does adoption
cost? And then they quickly say, and why is it so expensive? Exactly.
You're exactly right, Tracy. This is an important topic. It's not the most important
topic, of course, but this is an important one because adoption often is expensive
and because of that, it's a real challenge and something that families need to think
about in advance and throughout their adoption journey. So in terms of the initial
question, how much does it cost? Well, we really need to then step back and say
what type of an adoption are we talking about? Because the most common type of
adoption in the U .S. is adoption from foster care. I know you know that. And
adoptions from foster care are typically either very low cost or no cost. There are
exceptions to that, and we could talk about that if we want to, but the reality is
that most families who adopt don't pay that much for adoption. And so then we,
you know, scratch our head. Why does everyone say it's so expensive? Well, because
private adoption can be quite expensive. And that would be private domestic adoption
or inter -country or international adoption. And, you know, both of those options of
private adoption are expensive. For private infant adoption, there are pretty wide
ranges, you know, anywhere from if someone told me they paid 30 ,000 to 70 ,000.
Obviously, that's a huge range. But I'm seeing more in the 40 to 50 ,000 range at
present in terms of what families are paying to complete their adoption, you know,
soup to nuts, including like post adoption reporting or, you know, placements, you
know, all of that. For an international adoption, that has gone up pretty
significantly in recent years. It used to be in that like 20 to, you know, 30 ,000
range. Now I think 30 would be on the low end. And, you know, I see family
spending as much as 50 ,000 to complete an international adoption. So I think
anywhere, again, big range, but there are a lot of different factors that go into,
you know, why it might be on the lower end of that range or the higher end of
that range. What are some of the reasons you alluded to why people ask,
Why does it cost so much? What are some of the things that those expenses represent
in the process? Yeah, great question. So depending, again, on an individual adoption,
there might be, for private domestic adoption, for example, it might be in state or
it might be an interstate adoption where the parents perhaps are traveling to the
state where the child's born. They're going through what we call ICPC, the interstate
compact on the placement of children. They might need to spend, you know, another
week in that state. There might be travel expenses associated with that. Certainly
they're paying for a home study. They're going to have legal fees or perhaps hiring
an attorney. Hopefully there's an attorney representing the expectant parents and the
birth parents. And, you know, on top of all of that, there's an adoption agency
that should be overseeing the entire process. And that adoption agency, even if it's
a nonprofit, has to be sustainable, that they're going to have to be, you know,
charging fees for that to maintain their licensure, their accreditation, you know, all
the work that they're doing to, you know, exist as an agency. Most agencies doing
private domestic adoption are often doing counseling to expecting parents who often
never place for adoption. They get information, they choose to parent. And, you know,
we can celebrate that as a good thing from the adoption agency's point of view.
That's part of why they exist is to help women and expectant parents think through,
you know, whether or not that's the right decision for them. Again, most of them
are going to choose to parent, you know, but these agencies are paying at no cost
to have those counselors available and to provide, you know, services in that regard.
And then thinking about international adoption, you know, the single biggest expenses
is likely related to travel. And some countries you might be traveling more than
once or for an extended period of time, either way, you know, by the time you're
buying international tickets and staying in hotels and all the meals and everything
else, that's often the single biggest line item on top of, you know, U .S.
immigration fees and, you know, everything else that's going to be wrapped up in a
family's adoption process. Yeah, those professional services rendered to get you to
the point where you can even hop on the plane or go to the next state over to
take guardianship and be in possession of that child is staggering.
It is. And, you know, what we don't want to do is cut corners. We want high
-quality licensed professionals who are overseeing this process, handling this process.
Adoption's not where you want to say, you know, how can I get through this with
spending the least amount of money? Of course, that's a fine goal to have, but that
shouldn't be the driving decision maker. We want the best, you know, quality services
in support for the family, for birth parents, for adoptees,
pre -and -post adoption. Yep, that's exactly what I was going to say is those
professional services are not where you want to be cutting corners. That's right.
Most of the hopeful, adoptive families that are listening to this do not have access
to large lump sums of $30 ,000 or more. What are the different ways they can pursue
affording an adoption, no matter what kind it is? There's a lot we can unpack
there. And you're exactly right when we grew our family by adoption. We didn't have
a huge sum of money, you know, in our back pocket that we could just, you know,
drop on the table or write a check. Instead, it was a planned process and it was,
you know, fees that we paid over time. You know, one thing for your listeners to
note is they're generally not going to have to pay $30 ,000 or $40 you know,
all at once that right when they submit, you know, their application to work with
the adoption agency, those fees are going to be paid out over time. But in terms
of things that they should know, depending on the type of adoption, they might
qualify for an adoption subsidy. And so I already mentioned adoptions from foster
care are often low cost or no cost. Well, in addition to that, if the child's
eligible and we can talk about that or point to other resources to determine this,
the child might qualify for an adoption subsidy where the parents are then getting
ongoing support every month, not, you know, tens of thousands of dollars a year,
but they are getting ongoing support as part of the state's way to support adoption
and to want to incentivize moving children from the child welfare system to the
permanency of an adoptive home. One of the probably the most important things for
your listeners to know is that there are a lot of adoption grant makers who offer
support or low -cost loans or no interest or low -interest loans. And these are ways
that families often are able to, you know, receive a nice little boost. If they're
getting, you know, $3 ,000, we might say, well, that's not that much compared to
the, you know, large fees that are expected, well, I think most of us think $3 ,000
is a lot of money and we're grateful for it. It might be, you know, more than
that, could be a little bit less than that. But when they qualify and receive these
grants, we might think of that as like a tuition scholarship or something. You know,
it really does go a long way. And there are certainly families who are able to
qualify or receive, you know, more than one grant from different grant makers. And
then on top of that, you know, I encourage families as they're thinking through the
process and planning it is to understand whether or not they're going to be eligible
for the adoption tax credit. Many families are. And just this year,
Congress made the adoption tax credit partially refundable. So going forward, even
more families are going to be eligible to receive that adoption tax credit. So
understanding that whether or not they're eligible can help them in terms of their
thinking through this process. For most people, there are certain exceptions.
For most people, that's going to come well after their adoption. For example, my
wife and I grew our family through adoption. We completed our adoption in early
2018. When we filed our taxes in early 2019, we applied for and then received the
adoption tax credit. And I do want to remind listeners that we have an annual
adoption tax credit episode that we air every January, and it is a very thorough
kind of deep dive into understanding the adoption tax credit,
including the recent changes that Congress just made that Ryan alluded to, and how
to maximize that adoption tax credit for their own adoption experience. Oh, that's
great. You know, I often encounter people who don't know about or wish they had
taken it and didn't know or didn't think they were eligible and they probably would
have been. So it's important to be, I'm sharing that information with all types of
adoption. But I find especially for those that adopt from foster care, they might
immediately think, no, that doesn't apply to me because we didn't have a lot of
expenses associated with our adoption. And, you know, I encourage not to just stop
there, but to really look into it further, they very well might qualify for the
adoption tax credit. Yeah, it's a great benefit for those who are doing really any
of the kinds of adoption that we're talking about today. That's right. What other
methods should families be considering to afford an adoption? And then can you,
as you run them down, kind of give the pros and cons of each because some of them
are not immediately apparent to anyone who's looking to raise money to do this
adoption. Great question. And I think depending on how far one is from starting
their adoption or if they're in the middle of the process, some of these are going
to be better than others. If someone is thinking to themselves, we're going to be,
we want to grow our family through adoption in a year or two, I would encourage
them to start now in terms of financial savings. They could be putting just even a
little bit every month aside or finding ways to decrease spending so that they have
a little bit more saved up. And that can be part of getting started here. So
looking at just where they're currently at in their budget to say, is there room
for change? Certainly before an adoption or before one's doing a lot of parenting or
any parenting, that can be a time where you might think, is there a second job I
can get, you know, a side gig? Are there things that we can be, you know, looking
around that we don't need anymore, perhaps doing a yard sale or, you know,
I'm too ignorant to know how people do it, but I, you know, my wife sells things
through Facebook or buys things through. You know, these are ways that I know a lot
of families are thinking about, you know, how can we be well positioned financially
going into an adoption. You know, when one is really close to or in the middle of
their adoption process, I would encourage them to talk to their church, if they're a
member of a church or a different faith community. Many different churches have
supports, kind of like these grantmakers do, where they are going to be able to
provide support. Certainly employers and employer benefit programs. Not all employers
have this, but many do. And there are times where I've met actually a number of
people who said, my employer didn't have anything, but when we asked about it, they
said, well, we have all these other benefits for employees who are growing their
family or utilizing different services. We should have something for adoption. And
then all of a sudden, through even a small amount of advocacy or even just asking
questions, they're able to establish that not just for themselves, but for other
employees or future employees. Just quickly about the employer benefit programs, what
do you see is the most common iteration of that? Is it a grant? Is it a loan, a
low -cost loan? What do you see right now? I've never, I haven't seen low -cost
loans from employers. Some larger employers or ones that are really wanting to be
very supportive of adoption do offer grants. I mean, so very large employers, there
are some that say will pay for any adoption expenses. That's a rare thing, but that
there are employers who do that. Probably what's more common if they are doing a
financial payment would be, you know, a grant of some sort, so a couple thousand
dollars, perhaps, or paying for certain expenses associated with it. But the most
common in terms of benefits are going to be things like parental leave, a paid
parental leave, benefits that are common for other employees who are growing their
family and looking at adoption and saying, this is an equally supported way of
growing a family. And so we want to treat you the way we're treating others or
perhaps even do more because they recognize there might be certain differences like
international travel or post -adoption commitments or times that one's going to court
and the employers recognize that and say we want to ensure you have time to bond
and attach with your child we want to ensure you have the you know resources that
you need to be successful and what's great if I can take just a quick moment Tracy
what's great is that there are researchers who have studied this and found that
employees are then more apt to show loyalty and support to their employer if they
think their employer is supportive of adoption. And so this can really be a win -win
for employees and employers. Yep. You know, on top of employee benefits and the
increased savings and, you know, getting that second gig, I encourage that to not
happen after one, you know, parenting is. Very good point. We want to focus on our
kids. There are other things I've seen families do. So they do like crowdsourcing,
they might do fundraisers, they might, you know, organize fundraisers. There are
families that get airline miles donated to them or hotel points or things that might
not be as traditional or we might not immediately think about it, but can make a
huge difference for these families. And let's talk a little bit about the crowd
sourcing and fundraising because it can be a little controversial in our adoption
circles. So let's talk a little bit about what some of the controversies might be.
And then also let's talk about how prospective parents can guard and protect their
child's story while still getting the word out that they could use some financial
help with this process. Yeah, that's a really important point for us to be mindful
of. One of the ways I like to talk about this is that we're not keeping secrets,
but we are keeping things private. And there is information that is private. And so
we want to be mindful of how we might use a child's picture, how we might be
talking about part of their story. Especially, I mean, there are differences. One, if
you're not even already the legal parent of a child, you need permission to be
sharing information and pictures and stories. And you want to be mindful of who
might else have access to see what you're saying now or in the future because you
don't want to jeopardize your adoption but on top of that we want to be really
respectful of our children and of their birth families and we we want this to
really be their story to share if there is some difficult information they should
hear that from us and not from members of the wider community so we want to be
really thoughtful about that we could focus on you know, what the prospective
adoptive parents are doing. We're growing our family through adoption without having
to say, and here's our child's traumatic backstory. That's often not necessary.
There might be well -meaning people who are interested. Like, you know, what's the,
why is it that the birth parents chose not to, you know, parent this child?
You know, what happened in this child's past? Help me understand more about this
particular special need. And we want to be really careful. I like the words you
used about being guarded and protective because that's our role as parents is to do
that. And that should be our role when we're thinking about birth family as well.
We want to be respectful. We want to be mindful. And we want hopefully to be
growing a positive relationship. And one of the best ways to do that is to be
protective, but also help understand that what we are saying, even in something like
a fundraiser, might be shaping the views of our friends, our family, our community
towards our child, towards our child's birth family. And so we want to be positive
and we want to, again, be, you know, keep private information private. If a family
does choose to fundraise, what are some of the very practical ways that they can
protect that child's story and proceed ethically. You mentioned kind of those nosy
questions. One of the things that we do in our family to handle nosy questions is
answer a question with a question. Well, why do you ask? So can you give us maybe
some practical tools like that that would help these families that maybe do feel
like they need to crowdsource, but they do want to proceed ethically. Yeah,
so when intrusive questions or inappropriate comments come one's way,
it is helpful to have prepared in advance. And there are a lot of really good
resources, free online resources that prospective adoptive parents and the wider
community can utilize and think through what are some of the more common questions
that come up and how am I going to answer them? Because what you just said, Tracy,
is a great strategy. But in the moment, we're not going to know that or we're not
going to react that way unless we've planned it in advance. And because typically
what happens is we kind of freeze up or we panic and we think, I can't believe
she said that or I can't believe he asked that or I can't believe this is really
happening. And we then might not respond the way we would want to had we spent
some time thinking about it. So let's do that. Let's think about it in advance. If
someone asks me inappropriate questions about birth family, here's how I'm going to
respond. If someone asks me a question that I think is too intrusive, let me
understand. And I like your strategy of asking a question. At times, we might simply
say, especially if it's a loved one who is well -intentioned, but is crossing perhaps
of boundary, is to say, hey, this isn't my information to share. Not keeping a
secret, but I'm keeping something private. And, you know, it's not about you. It's
about wanting my child or, you know, whoever we're in that instance protecting,
you know, I want this to be their story to tell or their information to share at
a time when they're ready for that. And so knowing in advance how we want to do
that, that might need to be true So for anyone that is in our inner circle or
might have more information, we want to equip them as well. So grandparents come to
mind, siblings, close friends, other children in the home, especially older children
who might get asked questions by their friends at school or teachers or others. How
are we going to prepare them to answer questions? And what are we going to say to
them to not, again, have a feeling of secrecy, but an understanding of privacy.
Yeah, this is an excellent time for you to be educating yourself and preparing
yourself and or any children that are in the home. It's probably not the time to
start figuring out how to educate the masses. Right. Yeah, exactly. To start training
yourself that the child's privacy deserves the highest priority first.
I think that's exactly right. And we don't want our child to then be put on a
pedestal to say, here's how we're going to teach the rest of the world about
adoption or about foster care or about how to parent. That's not the child's role
or place, and that's not the best way to go about that. People might have genuine
questions, and maybe we can point them to creating a family or National Council for
Adoption or many of our partners who have really good information and resources, And
that can be how we choose to help them learn more or grow through, you know,
wanting to get some answers to questions they have.
Thanks for listening to How to Afford Adoption. I hope you're enjoying the show so
far with Ryan Hanlon. It's always very informative to sit down and talk with
organizations like National Council for Adoption about the work they're doing. And
we're excited that this show can help you and your family afford your adoption. If
you could take a moment of time and go to the little response link in your podcast
player or the link on the YouTube show notes, we want to hear from you. We want
to know, is this show hitting the mark for you? What app are you listening to us
on? Where are you from? What's your adoption or foster care or kinship care story?
And how are you and your family doing in the process so far? What keeps you coming
back to creating a family .org? We want to know what topics you're interested in.
We'd like to hear about any or all of these questions to help us serve you better
and help us know if we're serving you the way you need to be served. And so if
you could take a moment to respond on your podcast player or the link in the
YouTube show notes. We would love to hear from you. And in the meantime, let's go
back and finish up with Ryan.
So also related to fundraising, what are some of the fundraisers or creative raising
of funds sometimes is not a fundraiser that you've seen some families do that are
maybe super creative or super effective? What do you see in out there? You know,
In terms of effectiveness, it's so different from one family to another that I
encourage them to lean into their strengths because what's going to be good for one
family is going to be terrible for others. That's true. I know for our family and
it's what I've seen for others. One of the fundraisers that I really love is
there's an organization called Both Hands. And what they do is they organize service
projects. And they call it both hands because one hand is designed to be caring for
widows and the other for for orphans is how they think about this and they're using
their hands and they're they're literally going about and they're fundraising for
their community to do a service project to care for a widow or you know somebody
in their community who needs that care and all of that funding then goes to support
their adoption and so I think donors really love to get behind that because they're
seeing something really service -oriented and practical and because they, you know,
really like to support the family's adoption of that person in their community. So
in some ways, it's like, you know, double the bang for your buck. You know, others
do things like, you know, golf fundraisers. That's not my thing because I'm terrible
at golf and that wouldn't be an effective strategy. But, you know, for others, if
where their friend groups at or their community, that can be a really effective way
to do fundraising yard sales, or something I always encourage because most of us
need to like clean out all the junk we have in our basement or in our garage or
wherever. And it can be a nice way to also help prepare our home for a child
that's joining our family. And so I think that can be a nice small way to bring
in some extra funding. But don't overlook the grant making organizations.
And don't count yourself out. Really, you know, take those seriously, do the
research. And I think that's the most common. Certainly when I worked at an adoption
agency, that's what I saw most commonly for families that were in process. Yeah.
I've seen the same. I've also seen spaghetti dinners and benefit concerts and kids
banding together to offer a service and, you know, please donate to, you know,
this adoption process. It's as varied and creative as the families are also varied
and creative. That's right. And don't limit yourself to what you've heard on this
podcast or what you've seen other families do. There might be new ideas. You know,
I heard of a family who made crazy months of money through a lemonade stand. Their
kids wanted to be involved and help support. And the community loved that. And so
they were, they were bringing in a ton of money just through selling lemonade at a
stand. That's so cute. I love that. Yeah, that's great.
How far in advance should these hopeful parents start thinking about some of these
specific tangible efforts towards affording their adoption? I've never heard someone
say they started too early. So I would say, you know, as early as possible is
better, especially on that piece around the savings and preparing, but even just
informing themselves of what the process could look like. We won't know exactly how
long it's going to take. No one's going to be able to tell you that. But, you
know, there's so much that can be done in advance. And so the earlier one starts,
the better. And again, never heard of a couple saying, we started planning this too
soon, or, you know, we saved too much money. It's just not, not happened yet. So
you mentioned that adoption from foster care is the most common form of adoption in
the country, and that adoption subsidies and the adoption tax credit are both very
common uses for our common methods of affording adoption in that particular circle.
Can we circle back a little bit to talk about what an adoption subsidy is and why
foster parents who are adopting from foster care might already be familiar with that
monthly payment? Foster parents often receive like a different states or jurisdictions
can call it something different, but it might be a maintenance fee or, you know, So
child -oriented support, and they're getting that monthly. An adoption subsidy is
typically not as much as they would receive while they're foster parents, but it can
still be a substantial thing. It's important that families know you have to be found
to qualify or eligible for an adoption subsidy, and that only happens pre -adoption.
And so if you're fostering a child or if you're in the process to adopt a child,
don't let that adoption become finalized before you've checked for eligibility, applied
for, and received eligibility. Now, you might not be eligible. Some families aren't.
And if you've done your due diligence and the conclusion is not going to be
eligible for subsidy, I don't want to keep you from finalizing that adoption. But
the majority of families who adopt from foster care end up qualifying and being
eligible for a subsidy. And it's just a tragedy when you meet families who say, no
one ever told me about this, or they encourage me to just finalize the adoption
right away and apply for subsidy later. That's a losing strategy. Make sure you
apply for that subsidy first, and it can make an enormous difference. And if you
think, you know, I would adopt this child anyway, that's fine. Isn't it a great
thing that you get this? I think of it, just like I think of the adoption tax
credit as post -adoption support. This is funding that we can use to help meet our
children's needs, and they often do have needs. They're often going to be receiving
certain therapies or services post -adoption. We want to have the resources to meet
those needs. So without getting too specific, what are some of the things that might
qualify a family for an adoption subsidy? Well, if the child's in care,
then the state needs to determine that the child is likely in need of a subsidy.
And the way they look at that, the primary way one looks at that is through if
there's a special need of some sort. Okay. And I want to be quick to say the way
the adoption community often talks about special needs and the way states and the
federal government are looking at special needs is different. And so any family that
does an international adoption, even if the child has a medical special need, is not
going to qualify for an adoption subsidy. But a child who's placed for private
domestic adoption under the, you know, a custodial adoption agency, that child has a
significant medical need, that child might qualify for a subsidy. And then it changes
a little bit every year. But it's something like 90 % of the adoptions from foster
care are qualifying for subsidy. And the special need determination can be less
related to a medical condition and it could be related to the child's age or some
other factor variable that the state determines makes them less likely to be
immediately adopted and how the subsidy is a way to help incentivize families to
move towards adoption. Yeah, so if you're a family that is fostering a child that
you hope to or plan to adopt, please reach out to your caseworker and ask them to
explain the process to you and make sure that they're helping you understand whether
or not this child qualifies and how to implement all of that before the adoption is
finalized. And if they quickly tell you, no, you're not eligible, do your own
research or get a second opinion from someone who's really well informed, because
this can be a big deal. This could be a lot of money left on the table. Again,
if we look at this, not just as more money for my family, but post -adoption
support for my child, all of us want what's best for our kids and we want the
resources to meet those needs. Yeah. And creating a family has some great resources
on our website that I will link in our show notes about adoption subsidies and how
to negotiate them and how to work towards implementation of those to be able to
afford the adoption. Great.
One final interruption to remind you that we have a library of 15 free courses,
thanks to our partnership with the Jockey Being Family Foundation. These courses are
designed to strengthen your family, to prepare you and educate you about issues and
challenges you might face as an adoptive family or a foster family and to build
your toolbox to help you better come alongside the child that you bring into your
home and support them and serve their needs. You can find that library at Bitley
slash JBF support. That's BIT .L .Y slash JBF support.
And Now we're going to go back and finish the show with Ryan.
Okay, so let's talk a little bit about where families can go, both in their local
community and online, et cetera, to start learning about how to afford adoption.
You know, I think the links you're going to put in your show notes are a great
place to start. I know we have a whole landing page on our website dedicated to
helping people understand different financial resources, grant makers, loan options,
you know, et cetera. And so that's a great place to go. Talk to other families in
your community. What did they do? Going to our employers even now, talking to our
faith community even now, you know, the single most practical thing one can do is,
is budget and plan. And, you know, get an understanding when are the different is
going to come up? What's my cash flow plan to meet those needs? And when these
prospective adoptive parents have a good budget and a good plan in place, it's
absolutely possible to adopt and finances don't need to be a barrier for them.
You know, when families have the will, they find a way. And that's certainly true
with financing pieces related to adoption. The single biggest concern families have is
that finances are going to be a barrier, but it's often much more of a concern
before they go into the process. And then looking back, they realize there were a
lot more supports that we had than we, you know, And once they are,
you know, better understanding subsidies and the tax credit and these grant -making
organizations, they recognize it's not nearly as daunting as they thought going in.
Like you said in the beginning, most people don't have huge sums of money laying
around thinking, I wish I could give this to a social service agency out there, but
they're able to find a way and they find their community wants to support them,
their friends and family want to support them and are excited to do so, and that
there are a lot of creative things they can do to make the legitimate expenses not
become a barrier for their dream of growing their family through adoption. And I
will add, if you struggle with budgeting or if you struggle with understanding your
finances, look around for some nonprofits or some people in your faith community or
people in your school community who have this skill already and work out something
with them that can help you learn what you need to know about how to budget
properly that can, you know, give you some accountability, give you some structure if
that's missing in your, you know, current financial status. We did a program through
another nonprofit that helped us pay down all of our debt so that we could, you
know, roll all of that over to savings. And it was fantastically supportive because
it was done in the context of a small group. So each of us had joined this small
group for a different reason behind wanting to learn how to save money and budget
better. But we were all able to support and encourage each other towards individual
goals. And we had some kind of buy -in to each other's goal outcomes, which was
very supportive and encouraging. There's an accountability factor there, an
encouragement factor there. And you're also learning from one another. You're seeing
what they're doing. And we might even change our mindset for what's normal. Maybe
going out to dinner three times a week, you know, is the norm in your friend
community. Yeah. And you then get a, you know, a smaller community or accountability
within a community to say, hey, we're going to, we're going to stop doing that for
a period of time so that we can say for an adoption, this bigger goal that we
have or so we can, you know, put ourselves in a situation where we can adopt or
we can meet children's needs or we could support someone else's adoption. And, you
know, that might make it an easier thing to do in a group than just, you know, by
by oneself or just that couple. And just as you're learning to lean into other
people's strengths when you do that and look for budgeting help or fundraising help
or whatever, you can be allowing other people to lean into your strengths and trade
that for financial services. You know, for example, if you're great at batch cooking
and you regularly have six or eight, you know, frozen meals in the freezer, consider
offering those in trade for either financial help and support or selling those as a
fundraiser because that's something you've already got a strength in and you can
offer. And I think it's a great way to take advantage of your strengths and use
them for your end goals, but it's also a great way to let people in because they
feel like if they're getting, you know, this nice free lasagna once a week because
you know how to do that, you know, it's a great trade off. Well, and people really
want to help. People want to come alongside you. It can be a hard thing as new
adoptive parents because you've got actually so many people saying, what can I do?
What can I do? And your goal is to be be bonding and attaching. So you don't want
everyone else helping with your child, but having them do things that are practical
beforehand during your adoption process or maybe doing meals afterwards. There are
lots of things that can look like support. Our job is to be open to that support,
to be mindful and thoughtful about it, but allow others to come in and support you
because they want to do that. And recognize that the support beforehand is going to
look and needs to look different than the support afterwards. And I appreciate the
fact that you keep reminding us that once we have the child in our home, our
method of being mindful about our family's needs must change.
And that's a really good reminder to prioritize the child's needs once they're home.
That's exactly right. And, you know, I always like to joke in conversations about
this when people say adoption's so expensive. And I just think kids are so
expensive. And so as much as we are budgeting and planning for an adoption process,
this is a long -term game here. And we're budgeting and planning for our lives to
be changed for this, you know, might be a cute little kid who's joined a family.
It's a cute little expensive kid. Because, you know, there are just a lot of things
that come with growing our families, and our ability to be mindful and plan for
that in the long term is important. Yeah, I appreciate that. So let's do a little
bit of a deep dive on the resource page that first prompted me to reach out to
you. National Council for Adoption has a resource page on affording adoption. So give
us the whole spiel. Yeah, so we created this page because we had a lot of
different links and things. We wanted to put it all in one place where people can
find it. We're often asked, how do I afford adoption? Why is this so expensive and
what can I do about it? Just like we've had that conversation today. So it's easy
to find from our homepage under resources. Our website is adoption council .org. This
particular landing page, it's, you know, adoptioncounsel .org slash financial dash
resources. And when someone goes there, they will learn more and just feel normal
because they'll see, yeah, the way they're feeling is the way other people feel.
This can feel intimidating or a barrier. But we've got then links to free resources
to better understand adoption subsidies, to better understand the tax credit, to
better understand grants and loans. Who are these grant makers? What's an adoption
loan? Most people have never heard of that. But there are credit unions and others
who want to allow adoptive families to have a good plan in place and to they're
not they're not looking for this to be a huge money maker for them what they
actually tell me is Ryan adoptive families are the best at actually paying back
these lands they've they've got you know better than any other service line we do
adoptive families are good at this in part I think is they get that big tax credit
later yeah but in part because they recognize how important this is so you know the
the page we have is meant to be pointing people to free resources that are,
you know, doing our best to make this easy to understand and connect with reputable
service providers. These grant -making organizations do just awesome, awesome work.
And, you know, it's always surprising to me when I meet a family who hasn't applied
for a grant because I think, you know, these groups want to support you. They want
to get money. They view this the way you and I do, Tracy, where they view this is
post -adoption support and the family support to ensure that these families can focus
on what is most important and not be stressed by the finances. So these are just
awesome groups that we love connecting people to. Right. Well, I will link the page
in our show notes so that families can not just gain conversational input from
today's interview, but also the links and the little mini articles,
because I've surfed around the page myself, little mini articles about how to afford
adoption. I am so grateful, Ryan, for your time today. I think that this is going
to be very practical information for those who are kind of just getting started or
those who are maybe starting again and been adopted in a while. So thank you for
your time and for your expertise, but also thank you for everything that you and
NCFA do to support all the members of the adoption constellation in all the families
across America that are impacted by adoption. We deeply appreciate partnering with you
in these things. Yeah, thank you. It's a pleasure to do that work and to partner
with creating a family and others to serve this community is just a real privilege.
So appreciate the time today and you just want to reiterate to families that are
intimidated by this. It is possible you will find a way. You'll find lots of
support and people who want to support you along the way. So don't let that keep
you from your goal and your dream of growing your family. Oh, excellent last word.
Thank you so much. Thank you.