ADOPTION SERVICES FOR OUR EFA FAMILIES
Welcome to Eternal Family Adoptions (EFA), a program dedicated to strengthening families who are striving to be together forever!With a gospel-centered perspective, EFA will help educate, support, and guide you on your adoption journey.
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If you are new to adoption, or if you just need a refresher course, we suggest you take our orientation. It can answer many of the questions you may have, and give you the knowledge to empower you on your adoption journey.
The Adoptive Pre-Placement Evaluation, generally called a “Home Study”, helps prepare you for adoption and ensures that you meet agency and state requirements.
If you already have a current home study, we will assure that it compliances with agency standards.
We accept completed adoptive home studies from sources that adhere to professional adoption standards.
We know the goal of any adoptive family is to add children to their family as quickly and easily as possible. While adoption is unpredictable, our goal is to help you add to your family.
Throughout the entire process we will help assure your needs are being met and get you closer to the family you always dreamed of having.
We are very aware of the challenges of adopting, but we are dedicated to help both birth parents and the adoptive parents through this complex process.
Our adoptive family department will serve as your advocate and guide throughout your application, matching, and placement. We are always ready to offer assistance and make this process easier. Many members of our staff have adopted children themselves, and worked in the adoption field for many years. We understand what you are going through.
We are committed to supporting birth parents and adoptive families after placement.
Our Post Placement Department handles communication between birth parents and adoptive families. This includes forwarding packages, pictures, and letters to the birth mother from the adoptive family and vice versa. We can also support conference calls between birth parents and adoptive families as well as visits if both parties agree.
We can also set you up with a free account in HeartConnect. This is private, secure online portal will let you communicate with each other in a group set up exclusively for you and your birth mom.
Our staff can answer questions, and facilitate communication for as long as you desire.
RESOURCES FOR ADOPTIVE FAMILIES
Learn more about the various aspects of preparing your home & family for adoption.
The thought of an open adoption can seem scary to an adoptive family. However there are many benefits of an Open adoption to everyone involved.
Benefits for the Birth Family: The ability to choose the adoptive family, less guilt and pain, help in dealing with pain and loss, comfort in knowing the child’s well-being, potential to develop a loving relationship.
Benefits for the Adoptive Family: More empathy for the birth parents, less fear of the birth family, more access to the child’s history, an authentic relationship with the birth family, doing what is best for the child.
Benefits for the Adoptee: Lessens fantasies about their birth family, questions about their identity can be answered, exposure to racial and ethnic background, eases feelings of abandonment, lessens loyalty conflict, increases circle of supportive adults, preserves the connection to the extended birth family.
A child can never be loved too much. Be open and honest. Build a relationship between your families.
There are many websites with helpful information and tips for the entire adoption process.
Some of our favorites are:
Raising Adopted Children; A Manual for Adoptive Parents by Lois Ruskai Melina. This is a parents’ guide to rearing children in an adoptive family.
Twenty Things Adopted Kids Wish Their Adoptive Parents Knew by Sherrie Eldridge. This collection of essays offers insight into 20 common, unspoken concerns that often affect adopted children and their parents, and offers pragmatic advice for overcoming these challenges together.
Real Parents, Real Children: Parenting the Adopted Child by Holly Van Gulden and Lisa M. Bartels-Rabb. Practical advice for parents on issues their children may face, offering insight into how adopted children commonly think and feel about being adopted.
Lifegivers: Framing the Birthparent Experience in Open Adoptions by James L. Gritter. This book should be required reading for all adoptive parents. The author does an excellent job empathizing with adoptive parents so they know that birth parents are regular people, just like them.
Some of our favorite books written for children
Did My First Mother Love Me? by Kathryn Ann Miller
Families Are Different by Nina Pellegrini
Happy Adoption Day by John McCutcheon
Horace by Holly Keller
Tell Me Again About the Night I Was Born by Jamie Lee Curtis
You are Special by Joanna Erlan and Mary Fox Prather
The Colors of Us by Karent Katz
There are many courses available on line. Enjoy these websites: