When Tammy Davis and her husband Chad decided to adopt from Alamance County one of the first people they spoke to was Donna Range.
Donna Range is a foster care and adoption worker for Alamance County. She works as the liaison between the foster parents and the children.
When parents come to her to talk about adoption or fostering, she first directs them to the Model Approach to Partnership in Parenting class. (MAPP) The MAPP class is a 10-week course designed for families to more learn their strengths and weakness as parents.
“You had to search your sole and really feel what you really wanted, whether you wanted a special needs child, whether you wanted an abused child, or whether you wanted to wait for an infant,” Tammy Davis explained.
Range said that a MAPP class is required of most adoption agencies and is accepted as a universal training.
Once families have passed the MAPP class they’re eligible to apply to be foster parents. The home, and other things will be inspected to insure that it is a safe environment for children.
When children are eligible for adoption that’s when Range begins the process of finding them a foster home. Range works with families like the Davises to help them prepare for a child.
“We really talk to parents about their end goal, what they will be willing to do,” Range said.
Once Range receives a case, she works with that child until they turn 18 even if they have been adopted, her job extends to helping the parents raise their child.
“We’re constantly emphasizing that our services are really for the children, Range said. “They are our main focus, our work is for them. Parents help us get to that to that point of what they need, but the children are really our main focus.”
Alamance Counties adoption rate ranges from 37 percent to 48 percent from 2012 to 2014. These percentages are calculated from the number of children in the foster care system who exit through the process of adoption.
“We always need more families willing to foster and adopt children,” Range said. “No, we never have enough families.”
This need is exactly why the Davises wanted to adopt here in Alamance county.
"We just felt that we needed to give children here in the united states a chance," Davis said. "It seems like they are kind of almost left behind and we just felt we wanted to stay in our community to adopt children."
Davis was adopted domestically as well and said that it greatly affected who she is today.
"If my parents hadn’t adopted me and I was born here in the US I just feel like I wouldn’t have gotten the chance I’ve gotten today to be who I am today," Davis said.
In 1999 Davis and her husband became parents to a 5-year-old named Dalia. When it became official it was almost unreal for the new parents.
"He had tears in his eyes and it was amazing to see him, you could just see like, he was like ‘I’m a dad’ and it was amazing and I’m like yeah ‘I’m finally a mom,’" Davis said.
International Adoption
International Adoption has been slowly declining over the past 10 years. Annual Intercounty Adoption reports show a 72 percent decrease since 2004. One of the major reasons for this degrease is because of the Hague Convention.
The Hague Convention establishes international standards of practices for intercountry adoptions. There are more than 40 countries participating As these rules have become more strict more countries are no longer eligible to participate in adoption serves with the United States.
Ethanie Good works at Carolina Adoption Services, which is an adoption agency that specifically deals with international adoption.
"International adoption agencies in the United States do everything that they can to ensure that adoptions are done ethically and are done in the best interest of each child that they are working with," Good said.