The home assessment will include visits to your home with all household members. You will be asked to share information about your background and lifestyle, and also health and financial information as it relates to meeting a child's needs. Children come into the care of the Oklahoma Department of Human Services because of abuse or neglect. Therefore, it's important that families who are interested in adopting these children be open to understanding and learning about the dynamics of neglect or physical or sexual abuse. When your adoptive home assessment is completed and approved, it can be submitted to the child's social worker so that you can be considered as an adoptive family for a child that you've seen on the Adoption Exchange.
Every child deserves a safe, permanent and loving home to grow up in.
For the children in DHS custody who are waiting for a safe and loving adoptive home, that wait can be long and frustrating if the child has special needs. If that doesn't work, we try to recruit a family from outside of Oklahoma. Recruiting qualified families to adopt children with special needs is not an easy task. The Exchange listing helps find families from other states who can provide a good home for waiting children and it helps kids get out of foster care and into adoptive homes more quickly. They are usually school aged children of all races who have special needs because of physical, developmental or emotional problems.