It shouldn’t be this hard for would-be parents to adopt

Fatherhood had been Sean’s dream since he was a young child of a single mother working two jobs in New York City. When she later married, he gained a stepfather and eventually two siblings, creating the family he always wanted and instilling a deeply held belief: Blood doesn’t define a family. Love does.

As he grew, Sean traveled the world and built a fulfilling and successful career as an executive in metro Atlanta. However, his childhood memories left him with an aching desire to become a parent and offer a child a loving home and sturdy foundation.

He considered surrogacy, but it was cost-prohibitive. Then, in 2019, Sean began investigating adoption. Being naturally drawn to the many deserving children he was connected with who were born into difficult situations, Sean had high hopes he would soon become a guardian to a young person in need. However, he quickly discovered his expectations about the process did not align with reality. He filled out hundreds of pages of paperwork, completed background checks, submitted credit checks, supplied references and participated in the 25 hours of training that most states require as a prerequisite to adopting. Several times, he found a child who touched his heart and applied to become their dad. He planned and prepared for his child’s arrival and eagerly awaited the day he could become a father. But every time, his hopes were ultimately dashed weeks later when he would be informed he was not selected for consideration.

This series of rejections left him disappointed, frustrated and heartbroken. In his native Georgia, with more than 2,900 children in the foster care system waiting to be adopted, including at least 300 with no potential adoptive family lined up, he felt the numbers alone would work in his favor. But unfortunately, delays in pairing an adoptive parent with a child in need are an all-too-common phenomenon in the United States.

For nearly two decades following the passage of the Adoption and Safe Families Act (ASFA), the United States has averaged a 50% success rate of helping children with a goal of adoption get adopted. Most of these children, upwards of 90%, are adopted by a relative or foster parent, leaving a small but forgotten population of children languishing in foster care year-over-year without a family. As the years go by, our most vulnerable children grow closer and closer to aging out of care, facing life’s challenges alone and becoming more vulnerable to homelessness, incarceration and human trafficking.

Despite this desperate need, Sean found himself chasing down social workers who didn’t have the time to help support his search, burdened with caseloads of up to 40 children per advocate and strained resources due to state budget priorities.

Fast-forward to January 2022, when his adoption coordinator connected him with Family-Match, a pilot program supported by the Georgia Division of Family and Children Services. Created by the nonprofit Adoption-Share, Family-Match leverages data and predictive models to better match children in foster care with compatible families. With help from the Family-Match technology, Sean created a personal profile that captured his unique attributes and allowed case workers to identify children that would be most compatible. For the first time since beginning the adoption process, case workers were the ones reaching out to Sean about waiting children. Three weeks later, after completing his profile, Sean was overjoyed to learn he was successfully matched and would have a son to call his own.

Since the adoption, Sean’s son has gone on his first beach trip in Belize, enjoys school and his “cool” clothes, and his caseworkers have marveled at the changes they see — his behavior has improved, his personality has bloomed, and he’s grown two inches as his physical well-being benefits from both a stable home and better diet. Sean says his son talks about going to college, and he is overjoyed at his new life of endless possibilities.

With so many children in need and parents looking to adopt, success stories like Sean’s should be the norm, not an exception. To break down unnecessary barriers to building lasting families, policymakers should embrace new innovations like Family-Match and consider adoption reforms and better appropriation of funding and resources to ensure more happy endings for qualified prospective parents like Sean and the children who need them.

With Roe v. Wade recently overturned and recent legislative attempts to rewrite ASFA, adoption has once again taken center stage in the arena of public discourse. Let’s seize this moment to urge our leaders to take action on improving our nation’s adoption process and embracing modern innovations and reforms to link children in need with the loving homes and bright futures they deserve.