Adoption/Foster Care and the Child with Special Needs  

Maryland Resources

Adopt in Maryland: Resource Information for Domestic and Foreign Adoption
This website provides extensive information on adoption in the State of Maryland, including a comprehensive list of state and private placement agencies, support groups and more.

Adoptions Together
This licensed, nonprofit adoption agency provides quality placement and lifelong support to anyone touched by adoption, regardless of age, race, religion or medical condition. Provides extensive post adoption services, including programs for adoptive children with special needs.

The Arc Of Baltimore
Provide foster care services to children throughout the Baltimore area. This included infants, children, teenagers and young adults. This program provides Specialized Foster Care, which provides ongoing case management and support to children with disabilities, and Treatment Foster Care, which provides intensive, time-limited therapeutic services in a community-based family setting to youngsters who have both developmental disabilities and serious emotional disturbances.

Arc of the Northern Chesapeake Region
Serves Harford and Cecil Counties. The Arc recruits and trains treatment foster parents. In the therapeutic setting of the foster home, children, ages 0-21, learn skills and behaviors that promote healing and improve family relationships. Treatment foster parents work in collaboration with the treatment team and biological family to help children with special needs return to their family, achieve independence, or become adopted.

Center for Adoption Support and Education
A nonprofit organization providing post adoption services to families in Maryland and Virginia. Services included Individual and Family Counseling, weekend seminars for parents, The Kids Adoption Network (providing groups for children who are adopted) as well as support groups for special issues such as social skills, ADHD, anger management, and more. The Maryland office is located in Silver Spring.

International Adoption Clinic at Kennedy Krieger Institute
This clinic provides pre- and post-adoption medical and developmental evaluations.

Kennedy Krieger's Therapeutic Foster Care, Adoption and Respite Program 
A program offers a continuum of services for children with special needs who need stable, loving homes but cannot live with their own biological families. Children from all over Maryland who have developmental disabilities, emotional disturbances and medically fragile conditions are placed with loving families in the Baltimore metropolitan region where they can receive intensive support, consultation and training from the developmental pediatric experts at Kennedy Krieger.

Maryland Department of Human Resources Social Services Administration
Basic information on adoption issues; listing of support groups in the State of 3. Maryland; Adoption Search, Contact, and Reunion; Mutual Consent Voluntary Adoption Registry, and more.

Maryland Adoption Resource Exchange
Photos and information regarding children in Maryland with and without special needs who are awaiting a permanent placement in a loving family.

Adoption 101
This adoption awareness curriculum has been designed to help adoptive parent group leaders and others train child welfare, medical, legal, education, and mental health professionals, and other community members to be more responsive to the needs of adopted children and to work more effectively with their families.

Diakon Adoption & Foster Care
Dedicated to uniting waiting children with forever families. From special needs, international, and domestic adoption to foster care and legal-risk placements (foster-to-adopt), we offer a range of services designed to bring permanency to the lives of children in need.


 National Resources

Adopt America
A national organization dedicated to finding permanent, loving homes for children with special needs.

"ComeUnity"
Serves multiple communities in the adoption and special needs arena. Professional and parent articles, newsletters, book reviews, mailing lists and annotated resource directories provide parents with information they need to provide the best care for their children.

Foster Family-Based Treatment Association

Foster Parent Community

Foster Kids Club
A website for foster children, containing many contributions from foster children, and creating opportunities for foster kids to communicate with each other.

Through the Looking Glass, Parents with Disabilities
The Parents with Disabilities Program provides information, referral and advocacy services for people with disabilities who are considering pregnancy or adoption.

The National Adoption Center
Faces of Adoption
The National Adoption Center founded is a non-profit organization dedicated to expanding adoption opportunities throughout the United States for children with special needs and those from minority cultures. The Center works with social workers and other adoption professionals to bring children and families together.

National Child Welfare Resource Center For Adoption
The mission of The Center is to assist States, Tribes and other federally funded child welfare agencies in building their capacity to ensure the safety, well being, and permanency of abused and neglected children through adoption and post legal adoption services program planning, policy development and practice. The Center provides technical assistance, consultation, training, information, referral and resource materials, to assist states and tribes to improve their adoption and adoption support and preservation services.

Special Needs Adoption.Com
Extensive website offering general information on special needs adoptions. Offers disability-specific information, resources, and message boards as well as recommended reading.