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Domestic Infant

Embrace A Child
Many children today need adoptive homes. Adoptive families offer birthparents facing an unplanned pregnancy a way to choose life for their child. Through adoption these birthparents can give their child the security and nurturance of a stable two-parent family. Most of the children entrusted to Bethany for adoptive placement are infants and young children. Some are healthy children of Caucasian, African-American, Hispanic, Asian, or multi-ethnic heritage. Other children have special physical, mental, or emotional needs. They all need the love and guidance that caring, mature, adoptive parents can provide.

Enrich Your Family
Thousands of people who have adopted children through Bethany have found that adoption is a positive, practical way to build a family. Some people who come to Bethany are childless, while others simply would like more children in their family. By reaching out to a child who needs a home, adoptive families find their lives immeasurably enriched. They experience the intense satisfaction of giving a child a secure and loving home and watching that child grow and develop.

How Bethany Can Help
For more than 60 years Bethany has helped build families through adoption. Our Northwest branches alone have placed over 850 children. Recognizing that adoption involves the emotions and expectations of many people, Bethany’s professional staff balance the needs of birthparents and adoptive parents. We assist birthparents who desire an active role in choosing their child’s adoptive parents. We help adoptive parents understand and prepare for adoption. Through the entire process we work to achieve our mutual goal of a secure placement in the best interest of the child. Bethany’s staff guides adoptive parents through all the steps of the adoption process and provides continuing support services following placement.

Adoption Plans At Bethany
Bethany offers a number of adoption plans. Bethany social workers will explain the options to birthparents and adoptive parents and help them decide which option is best for the child and for themselves.

• Confidential Adoption: Birthparents and adoptive parents exchange only non-identifying information.
• Designated Adoption: Birthparents choose an adoptive family for their child and authorize Bethany to handle the legal adoptive process. Or, adoptive parents initiate the process by networking to locate a releasing birth parent. Bethany then works with the birthparents and adoptive parents to legally complete the adoption plan.
• Open Adoption: Birthparents and adoptive parents share identifying information and together design a plan for continuing contact after placement. They work out the nature and frequency of ongoing contact they desire and establish a degree of "openness" that is comfortable for all involved.

Shannon Podgorski Adoption Specialist Foster Care Supervisor State Adoption Supervisor South Sound	Colleen Howell Expectant Parent Counselor & Adoption Specialist Eastern Washington & Eastern Oregon	Becky Crowl Domestic Adoption Specialist Seattle
Rebecca Spitzer Adoption Specialist Bellingham	Susan Butler Adoption Specialist Adoption Counseling Oregon