Taking the Right Steps
Elsa and Joan took an active role in looking for a child to adopt, and attended a Caseworker Dialogue meeting at COAC to hear about specific waiting children and to present themselves in person to agency caseworkers. At this meeting, the first they had ever attended, they learned about 9-year-old Maria, a legally freed child of Puerto Rican heritage. Two months later, Elsa and Joan met with Maria’s agency case planning team. The team really liked the couple, who in turn felt that Maria was a child whose needs they could meet very well. An initial meeting with Maria was then held at the Queens agency where she was living in a foster home. The couple and Maria interacted compatibly from their first visit. After a series of day visits, followed by overnight visits, weekend visits and then an extended visit at Thanksgiving break, everyone felt certain they were ready to make the commitment to become a family. At Christmas break, Maria went to live in her adoptive home and her adoption was finalized.
Maria has clearly felt relief in having a permanent family, and has been able to trust Elsa and Joan’s real commitment to being her parents forever and unconditionally. The couple is wholeheartedly enjoying the challenges of parenthood, and the opportunity to be part of Maria’s new experiences, such as traveling on a plane for the first time to meet Joan’s family in Arizona , and taking voice and dancing lessons. Elsa and Joan celebrated their eleventh anniversary together and said, “No other gift could compare with the gift of parenthood.”