Q: How do I adopt a child I found on the Internet (outside New York State)?

A: Like the New York State Waiting Children, any children whose parental rights have been terminated are in the foster care system, waiting to be adopted. Therefore, although your goal is to adopt, in order for that child to be placed in your home, you must have a Certificate to Board Children, also known as a foster care license.

FAMILY FOCUS ADOPTION SERVICES has created the Nationwide Internet Adoption Help (NIAH) Program to give you the opportunity to be considered for placement of children by jurisdictions outside of New York State. It is similar in many ways to our New York Waiting Children Programs, but once you are licensed, and with our guidance, assistance and mentoring, you may then begin your search for a child from almost anywhere in the country.

Here are the steps you need to follow in order to be ready to have a child from a jurisdiction outside of New York State placed into your home for adoption:

1. Information/Orientation at an agency: Before you begin any paperwork, agencies require you to attend a meeting at which they explain their services to you, and the needs of the many different children who may be available to adopt. At FAMILY FOCUS ADOPTION SERVICES, we call these our Adoption Information Meetings (AIMS), and we offer them several times a month at no charge. Before you have even decided if our agency is right for you, we give you as much information as we can on today's realities about the various types of adoption and foster care.

2. Training: In order to be licensed, you must attend a certain amount of training. Many agencies give training over the course of several weeks, a few hours each week, and the training includes many aspects of temporary foster placement. FAMILY FOCUS has developed a series of three training sessions that are specific to what you will face as you move toward permanency with a child. At the conclusion of the first session, you will have the opportunity to choose one of our programs that seems right for you, and ask for an application to that program.

3. Application: The application process is fairly extensive, and includes a good deal of paperwork for you to fill out. In addition, you will need to submit a set of fingerprints to be reviewed by New York State and the FBI, and you will fill out a form so that your background can be checked for any history of child abuse.

4. Home Site Visits: During or after the time it takes for you to fill out your paperwork and complete your training, a Caseworker will make appointments to visit your home twice, during which he or she will interview you, assess your home, and prepare to write your Family Study.

5. Family Study: Your study (called "Home Study" by many agencies) represents a summation of your paperwork, your interviews, your personal references, and your Caseworker's observations of your interactions, your environment, and your physical home itself. It will also contain a description of the type of child you are looking for. This is what jurisdictional representatives will read when they are considering you for placement of a child. In the NIAH program, if you change or expand the type of child you are open to considering, FAMILY FOCUS will change the description of the type of child you are looking for in your Family Study.

6. Search: We give you several resources and places to search for children. Occasionally, we may receive referrals of children from jurisdictions across the United States, which we then evaluate and pass on to our approved families for consideration. We suggest that the more active you are in your search, the better your chances are of finding a child who you think is an appropriate match for your family.

7. Placement and Beyond: When a child is located, FAMILY FOCUS will negotiate on your behalf to set up visits, with the goal of working toward placement of that child in your home. In the NIAH program, our services end with placement, unless a contract for further services is made.

You can view pictures and short histories of many of the children who are available for adoption throughout the country by visiting www.AdoptUsKids.org

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