Information for Prospective Adoptive Parents

Eligibility Requirements
The first question many prospective adoptive parents ask is about eligibility requirements.  At Nebraska Children’s Home, we do not have rigid eligibility requirements, but we do have a few general requirements.

• Couples must be married to each other for at least three years before they start the adoption journey.
• Couples must live in Nebraska.
• Each spouse must have medical insurance.
• Each spouse must carry $50,000 in life insurance coverage.
• If you previously filed bankruptcy, you must wait at least 3 years from the date of filing before applying to our adoption program.
• If parenting, your youngest child must be 18 months of age before applying. If approved you would not be eligible for selection by a pregnancy client until your youngest child is 2 years old.
• We do not require a certain income level, nor do we require that families own a home. Our primary concerns are how a couple manages their resources and how able they are to adequately provide for the needs of a child.
• We feel that a couple’s faith commitment is important, along with the spiritual environment of the home.

Starting the Adoption Process
If you meet our eligibility requirements (see above) and are ready to start the adoption process with Nebraska Children’s Home, we ask that you contact Kim Schenkelberg, our Intake Coordinator through email at 2Adopt@nchs.org

When you email us, please include the following information:

• Name
• Address
• Phone Number: home, work and cell phone
• Date of Marriage
• Date of Birth
• If you have children….how many?
• Specify all that you are interested in:  Infant Adoption, Adopting a second child, FosAdopt, Other

After you email us this information, please give us 7-10 working days to process your information and respond to you.  This will begin your adoption process.

Information Sharing (ISM) and ADOPT Meetings
After your initial contact with us, you will receive an invitation to our “Information Sharing Meeting” for prospective adoptive parents. This 3-4 hour meeting is held several times a year across the state either in the afternoon or evening.  We encourage you to come to this meeting with a list of your questions about adoption. The meeting is largely a question and answer session about adoption and particularly adoption at Nebraska Children’s Home. The meeting also gives you a chance to meet the staff of Nebraska Children’s Home.
After attending this meeting and if you feel Nebraska Children’s Home is a good fit for you, contact the Intake Coordinator and you will be sent an application packet to complete and return.
Once we review the completed application packet and it seems mutually desirable to continue to explore adoption for your family, you will be asked to come to Omaha for an interview with our Intake Coordinator. Following this you will be invited to attend a two-day group meeting called the “ADOPT” (A Day of Parent Training) meeting.  At the ADOPT meetings, you will receive information and education about adoption today.  

Home Study Process
After the ADOPT meeting, you will continue the home study process with an assigned caseworker in your area.  A home study is a positive experience that includes exploring marital and family relationships, family history, and preparation for parenthood through adoption.  A home study can also identify areas of concern that will need to be resolved prior to the completion of your home study.  If there are areas of concern that cannot be resolved we may close your application.

Becoming Approved
Once approved, a couple is considered as available for selection by pregnancy clients looking at an adoption plan.  How soon a placement might occur is impossible to predict and a placement cannot be guaranteed. More often than not, the pregnancy clients are involved in the selection process, and we never know what qualities or characteristics they will look for in adoptive parents.
These procedures may seem quite extensive and time-consuming, even intrusive, but we strongly believe the complexities and issues involved in adoption require ample time and consideration.  Adoption, like marriage, is a decision for a lifetime and something to be entered into only after thoughtful consideration.

Identified Placements
There are times that a couple may have established contact with a woman who wants to place her child with them but they do not have an approved home study. Nebraska Children’s Home may be able to help in these situations. Because we believe that the support and education we provide pregnancy clients is so important, we would hope that the woman would utilize our services, designating that couple for her child and we would conduct the home study for that specific child. The prospective adoptive parents would be required to attend ADOPT as part of their preparation for parenthood through adoption.

Education for potential adoptive parents
While potential adoptive parents wait for a placement, Nebraska Children’s Home provides group meetings called PREPARE to give education and support to waiting families. These groups help to inform families about the many facets of adoption such as:

• How do I handle the grief and loss of infertility?
• What does “open adoption” really mean?
• How do we visit with the birth family?
• What is the legal process behind adoption?
• How do I tell my child that he or she is adopted?
• Choosing to parent children with perinatal drug/alcohol exposure.
• Choosing to parent children with mental health conditions in the birth family.
• Choosing to parent children with major medical problems.

It is important that waiting families think about all of these things and more as they prepare for the life-long change that adoption will bring their way.

If you are interested in starting the adoption process, please email Kim Schenkelberg at 2Adopt@nchs.org or call us at (402) 451-0787.