Match With Your Child

Search for a Child

Your caseworker will work with you to find a child where both your and the child's needs are met. Once you have identified a child that seems like a match for your family, learn as much as you can about him or her. Talk to the child’s foster parents or social worker so you can help ease the child’s transition into your family. What are the child’s favourite foods and games? What is his or her background? And what were the birth parents like? What is the family’s and/or child’s medical history?

The child’s social worker should be willing to provide whatever information is available that will help you reach your decision.

Take advantage of the opportunity to visit with your child and get to know him or her. This is a very important step in determining how this child will fit into your family life and home.

If the child has certain medical conditions or other disabilities, now is the time to decide if your family is prepared and committed to address issues that may arise from the child’s situation.

Prepare For Your Child's Arrival

Take the time to anticipate how the addition of a new family member will effect your life and to plan for your future together. Depending on your situation and the child you adopt, you may need to:

Update your family's insurance - An adopted child can be covered under your health insurance from the date he or she is placed with your family. Group health insurance carriers must insure adoptees under the terms of their parent’s policy, and cannot deny coverage because of pre-existing conditions. Add a new child to your provincial/territorial public health insurance plan as soon as possible after he or she is placed in your home. Also change beneficiary designations on life insurance policies and update wills as needed.

Prepare for a new social insurance number, health card and birth certificate - These forms recognize the child’s new last name and family situation. Your child must have a social insurance number for you to claim him or her as a dependent.

Line up services for your child and yourself - Your province or territory may require one parent to stay home with your child for the first six months or longer, depending on the age of the child or children. If you adopt a younger child you may need to find a daycare. For an older child, you may need to enroll him or her in school, arrange for therapy, counselling or tutoring or identify respite options. You might also want to join an adoptive parent support group. The most important thing to remember: ask for what you need. Be an advocate for yourself and your child.

Make your house child-friendly - Modify, reposition or remove household objects that could be dangerous to your new child. Prepare their room to make it signal that the room belongs to him or her.

Inform your other children about changes that will occur - Tell them how their roles may change when their new brother or sister arrives and prepare them to help ease the situation. Provide them and the adopted child with information that will help them to answer questions from friends and neighbours about the adoption in a positive way.

Negotiate an adoption assistance agreement - Parents who adopt a child with special needs from a public child welfare authority or provincial adoption department, may be able to get some adoption assistance. Ask your social worker about obtaining a subsidy and what steps you must take to obtain one.

Bring Your Child Home

Children who are placed for adoption through public child welfare agencies may move in with their adoptive family after the parents are approved to adopt and they have completed required pre-placement visits – provided the timing is not unduly disruptive to the child’s schooling or other activities.

When a new child is placed in your home, you will assume temporary legal custody. For a few months while your family undergoes the inevitable adjustment period, your agency will monitor how the placement is going according to provincial and territorial guidelines.

The monitoring period is normally a minimum of six months, but could be as long as a year. During this period your social worker will call and visit to assess how you and your new child are adjusting and answer questions. If all goes well, at the end of the monitoring period, the agency will recommend to the court that the adoption be approved.