Adoption

Foster Care and Adoption Information Nights are held at both of our locations on the first Tuesday of every month, 4:00pm – 7:00pm.  CURRENTLY – These sessions are being provided via Zoom, instead of in person.  Please see our Home Page for contact and Zoom information to join.

At these informational sessions, you are able to speak with a knowledgeable member of our team in order to learn more about our agency and ask any questions you may have about becoming a foster or adoptive parent. These sessions are relaxed and informal settings, where you can be comfortable learning about this journey. We treat these like an open house, so feel free to stop by at any point between 4:00pm and 7:00pm.

In addition to reviewing the information available here on the website, you can click below to download an information packet and interest registration form.

Click here to download the Adoption Information Packet

We are delighted that you are considering opening your home and your heart to our children! The very fact that you contacted our program puts you in a special and valuable group of people – those who care about the millions of children in need of adoptive families. These waiting children need safe, loving homes in which they can thrive and grow.

The adoption program at A Better Chance for Our Children (ABCFOC) is unique in many ways.  At the heart of our unique approach is that we work almost exclusively to place children who are in foster care and who are considered to have special needs. You might be wondering what the term “special needs” actually means; we are referring to children who have emotional and behavioral struggles. They are of any race and may be any age, but we focus on children between the ages of eight and eighteen or infants with significant medical challenges. Often the children for whom we are seeking homes are children in sibling groups. Although we are able to place healthy infants, we rarely do. We believe that there are many other agencies that are doing that work very well and therefore we focus instead on the children who are harder to place.

The children we work with have often been neglected and/or abused before coming into foster care. Because of their experiences, these children are fearful of connecting to people and many times their behaviors keep them from finding a stable living situation. These are children who were formerly (and unfortunately) labeled “hard to place.” Since it is often more difficult to find and retain families for children with special needs, we work diligently with families both before and after placement to assist with the transition of a child into his/her new home. Furthermore, we provide numerous ongoing support services to the families we work with.

Frequently Asked Questions

If you are interested in becoming an adoptive parent with A Better Chance for Our Children, please click here to fill out an interest registration form.

Once you submit the registration form, we will invite you to participate in the next cycle of Resource Parent Preparation Classes. This training includes four informal group sessions held on alternate Saturdays, 9:00am – 4:00pm, for a total 28 hours of training. The group sessions typically include 20 – 30 people who are contemplating foster care, adoption, or respite.  To see when our next classes are scheduled, please click here to check the calendar.

During these preparation classes we present our families with a great deal of information regarding the challenges our children often bring to families. We strongly believe in the importance of educating our families as the education provides a more solid family foundation.  This education, like our support, continues over the life cycle of foster care, adoption or respite. The children waiting for homes now need strong, prepared resource parents.  At the core of our program is a focus on preparing and supporting the parents who come to us; however, the priority is ministering to the needs of children.

The preparation classes are also an opportunity for prospective parents to study the agency and the staff as representatives of the agency. We want you to be comfortable with our staff.  At A Better Chance for Our Children we believe that it is imperative that people coming to us are honest and open about their experiences. The relationship we build with you is the basis of all the work we do together. We must be comfortable with one another if we are to do this most important work together. We believe you will enjoy working with the staff at A Better Chance for Our Children and want you to know that we look forward to working with you!

After you complete the preparation classes and submit the required paperwork, an initial home visit will be scheduled to begin the home study process. A total of three visits will be required before the home study is complete. The paperwork includes an application, autobiography, medical forms for everyone living in the home, personal references, and background checks (fingerprinting) for you and other adults living in the home as required by law.

Once your home study process is complete and you are approved as an adoptive family, the process of connecting you with waiting children can begin!

If you are interested in pursuing a 2nd Parent Adoption or petitioning for Permanent Guardianship, a home study is required by family court. Once you submit your petitions to family court and select the agency you would like to complete your home study, we will receive a referral from court and can get started. Please feel free to call our offices in Milford (302-725-5008) or Wilmington (302-746-7265) for more information.

Foster Care

Children in foster care need safe, loving homes in which they can thrive until they return to their birth families or find permanent families through adoption. Yours might just be the home a child is waiting for!​

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Post Adoption Support

We provide a full array of post adoption support in Delaware. Our programs are open to ALL adoptive families in Delaware as well as families in Delaware who have guardianship of children who have exited from the State of Delaware foster care system. These programs are FREE to adoptive families.
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Therapy Services

We believe that therapeutic services for foster and adopted children are most successful when they are provided by adoption-competent and trauma=informed professionals.

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