Our mission is to simplify each child's adoption experience by offering excellent and expert care. While it is a complicated process for those who are new to it, our job as a child placing agency is to make each adoption experience happen as smoothly as possible. We pay special attention to you as well as the placing parents' needs, to important ethics, to laws and policies, and to the tricky dynamics that may be present in your case. Ultimately, we ask everyone involved to work together in the spirit of love and respect so that the child who is involved is honored.
We tenderly care for and restore dignity to human lives through providing ethical, gentle and loving family services. When we help parents make wise plans for their children's futures, everybody has a better outcome. When needed, resource families support these parents in the manner most reasonable under the circumstances. And if it turns out an adoption plan is best for a child, the child is placed by the parents into a loving adoptive home with the help of a caring, qualified professional.
Our staff follows principles taught by Jesus Christ (basically, love one another). If you desire, a member of our Prayer Team will pray with you and support you spiritually through this complicated time. Please trust we will respect your boundaries and beliefs.
We strive to maximize children's potential in life by offering them suitable and permanent homes where they will be given every opportunity to grow and develop in the happiest and healthiest manner possible given each child's individual history and situation. Adults respect a child’s life when they allow him or her to remain connected to what belongs to him or her. Charged to provide respectful and loving parents, we assist qualified adults in their desire to adopt a child.
Eligibility Requirements for Prospective Adoptive Families
Greater Hopes desires that any healthy and well-adjusted Michigan residents who wish to adopt apply at this agency. It is believed that in order to meet the wide range of needs that children have, there must be a wide range of family types available to adopt these children. Any family could be a desirable adoptive family if they are able to lovingly and freely embrace the adoptive child, his birthfamily, his culture, his self, and the difficult behaviors that the child may have. Inability to pay for services shall not make a family ineligible to adopt and waivers will be considered on a case-by-case basis.
The adoptive evaluation will include but is not limited to exploring the following topics: motivation to adopt, infertility, criminal activity and convictions, emotional stability, compatibility between joint applicants, adjustment of other children, attitudes toward adoption, and parenting ideals.
All families must complete an Orientation to Adoption prior to starting an Adoptive Evaluation.
1) Greater Hopes assists in voluntary domestic adoptions in which placing parents have selected the adoptive family from either their own support systems and communities, or from our pool of resource families. Often times these children are newborns, older infants, toddlers or preschoolers. Sometimes they are children that were previously adopted through other programs at other agencies. Their adoptive parents find they are struggling too much to provide adequate care to their adopted child, and they decide to make the loving choice of adoption much like a birthparent does.
Resource families/ potential adoptive parents also have the right to identify which birthparent circumstances they feel best able to support and assist. We fully support an ongoing and open relationship between the adoptive parents and the birthparents to whatever extent possible to benefit the child.
2) On a case-by-case basis we may assist in domestic adoptions involving older children. For more information about Michigan's waiting children click below:
Services are provided before an adoption takes place, during the adoption process, post release and post finalization. Eligible adoptive applicants, birthparents, and adoptees may receive the following direct or indirect services: options counseling, orientation to adoption, training and education about adoption and parenting topics, a Preplacement Consultation and Preplacement Assessment (homestudy) for adoption, counseling and mediation sessions, support groups, domestic legal relinquishment services and/or adoption filing services, post placement supervision, interstate services, intermediary/search services, and referrals to other social service agents as needed.
We are trying a new fee schedule out right now. This new arrangement allows us to offer adoption services at a much lower cost than you may have been quoted elsewhere. We hope to keep everyone's adoption costs to about $13,170 per adoption. That is the same amount most people can recover through federal and state tax incentives. Some things that could drive up the cost of your adoption:
if your case is complicated enough that an attorney must be hired (this rarely happens), if you live a distance from Grand Rapids your mileage fees paid to Greater Hopes will be more costly than those families who live near to Grand Rapids, or if your adoption involves a child residing outside of the state of Michigan.
Please email cathyr_greaterhopes.org for a detailed fee schedule.
This agreement pertains to the form, Fees and Services for Adoptive Applicants, dated January 2011.
I agree to pay the amount listed for services described when services are initiated.
I understand that it is not possible to move forward in the process until all fees are paid in full.
I understand that there is no guarantee that a child will be placed with me as a result of working with this agency.
I understand that these fees cover the costs of services related to making an adoptive placement and that fees paid are non-refundable. In the event the agency elects to refund any fee, a Refund Verification Record must be completed in full and signed by the client.
I understand that should I complete a Pre-Placement Assessment that I may be approved or not approved to adopt by this agency and that the fee for this service is non-refundable.
I understand that if my account is not paid in full that the agency may decline my request to complete further work related to my case.
I have the remaining questions about fees and services with this agency:
Fee agreements that vary from any part of this program statement shall be made in writing and signed by all parties.
I understand and agree to the statements made above.
Applicant signature: ___________________________________Date: _____________
Worker signature: Date: _____________
