St. Mary’s Domestic Adoption Programs
St. Mary’s offers different adoption programs to fit the needs of our adoptive parents. Within the Domestic Program, adoptive families can follow the Traditional or Identified programs. Within those programs, families also can choose the Special Needs or African-American programs. St. Mary's places newborn infants of all races and ethnic backgrounds including Caucasian, Hispanic, Asian, African-American and Asian-Indian or any combined mix of these races.With a traditional adoption, St. Mary’s Services identifies the pregnant woman considering adoption, provides counseling for her and the adoptive couple, conducts the home study and provides pre and post-placement services.
In an identified adoption, the prospective family locates a birth mother, often through their own networking and marketing efforts. The St. Mary’s marketing consultant will provide couples with direction for reaching out to potential birth mothers, but ultimately, the outreach is done by the adoptive family. After identifying the birth mother, the adoptive family refers her to St. Mary's where she receives the agency’s complete counseling services, just as in the traditional adoption program. A significant difference between the Traditional and Identified programs is that the adoptive couple reaches out to find the birth mother.
St. Mary’s places infants of all races and ethnicities. As part of our important work, we help couples who can provide loving homes for infants of African-American descent. Interested couples follow the same adoption steps as in our other programs. As part of this, and all of our adoption programs, we offer ongoing education for families, including a seminar about transracial adoption.
In recent years, St. Mary’s has seen an increase in the number of children with special needs. These cases might involve a birth parent who has a history of mental illness, a medical condition that complicates the pregnancy or a drug and/or alcohol addiction. While each of these situations may result in infants who require more special attention long term, we take great pride in finding loving parents for each and every one.
