How to Adopt a Child with Down Syndrome

To adopt any child, including a child with Down syndrome, your family will first need to do a homestudy. A homestudy is usually done by a social worker and describes the members of your family, where you live and the type of child your family is interested in adopting. Homestudies are shared with the child's agency prior to adoption, so that this agency may decide if you family is a good fit for the child.

There are agencies that will provide homestudies for a fee, but there are also agencies that will provide one for free. If you look in your local telephone book, or search online, for an agency that offers adoption and foster care services, they will usually provide your family with a homestudy for free.

There are also private agencies willing to provide a homestudy for potential adoptive families. The cost of a homestudy and follow-up visits after placement of a child is roughly $1000-$2000 at Homestudy.com


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As part of the homestudy, you may be asked to take foster care classes, CPR classes, or other types of classes deemed necessary by the agency. You will also want to prepare yourself at this point for the questions they will ask during the homestudy:

Why are you interested in adoption?
Why are you specifically interested in Down syndrome adoption?
What age child are you hoping to adopt?
Are you interested in a boy or a girl?
What is your family's religious affiliation?

Once you have a completed homestudy, you are free to search out and apply to adopt children independently. Many agencies will help you with your search, but do not feel you are limited to only those children. Photolistings are available online and a recent homestudy is all you need to express interest in the children listed.

Comeunity sponsors a list of state adoption agencies. Scroll about halfway down this page to view them. Following the link for a chosen state will take you to an adoption website where there will be a link to "meet the kids," or "view profiles." These photolistings may also have a search option to indicate that you are open to adopting a child with special needs. Some of these "children with special needs" will have Down syndrome, but be sure to fully read the child's profile to understand their situation.

In addition to these state adoption websites, there are a few sites online dedicated to maintaining photolistings of children throughout the US. AdoptUSKids is one website that has a number of special needs children. You must have a valid homestudy to sign up for AdoptUSKids.

We found our son on one of these state websites. It may seem odd to some people to browse for a child by photo. I can tell you that this method of reading about children and browsing their photos provided us with much more information about a child than foster-parenting. In my state's foster care system, they will not share photos prior to placement. They will answer questions, but the answers are not always truthful. Often the placement workers for foster-care agencies are trying to get children placed quickly, so the child will have a place to eat and sleep that night when they leave work for the day. If the child has behavior challenges, mental illness, or physical needs, these are often left undisclosed until the child is dropped off in your care.

I first saw my adopted son with Down syndrome on a photo website. I was so excited the first time we traveled to his state to meet him in person. It didn't take us long to realize he was perfect for our family.

The National Down Syndrome Adoption Network maintains a list of parents waiting to adopt a child with Down syndrome. I was on this list prior to adopting my child with Down syndrome. They did call me when we made it to the top of the list, but it was a few months after we had already located or son through a state adoption website.

For parents interested in newborns, this is a viable resource. For pregnant moms that have recently received a diagnosis, I urge you to call them if you do not feel you can parent your child yourself. Counseling and support is available here.

All of the resources listed above are for domestic adoption of a child with Down syndrome. There are also many international children with Down syndrome needing to be adopted. Comeunity also maintains International Adoption Photolistings

After you locate a child that you are interested in adopting, you submit your homestudy to the child's agency. If they see you as a good fit for the child, they will call you to arrange a meeting with the child. If the meeting goes well, more meetings can be arranged.

For children in state custody, the social worker may allow the family to assume temporary custody at this time. A worker from the family's agency will check in to ensure everything is progressing smoothly. If everything goes well while the child is in the potential adoptive parent's care, a court date will be scheduled for the official adoption. The court costs for us in 2003 were approximately $800.

There is an Yahoo! email group where the focus is the adoption of children with Down syndrome. The majority of parents on the list are looking and hoping to adopt a child with Ds. There are also some that have adopted children with Down syndrome and share pictures and status updates about the children they've adopted here. If you are looking to network with other parents, this is a great place to do it. Many parents also share their blog updates here.

Yahoo Group for the Adoption of a Child with Down Syndrome