Role of Adoptive Parents
Adoptive parents become a 'forever family' to children who, after a legal determination, can no longer live with their biological families due to unresolved concerns for their safety and well being.
Adoptive parents:
- Embrace adopted children as their own;
- Help the children succeed in a home free of abuse and neglect;
- Value the children's connections with family and loved ones;
- Foster the children's cultural connections;
- Nurture and guide the children's development;
- Handle difficult parenting situations, including lifelong emotional, behavioral, medical or developmental challenges that may result from the child's experiences with abuse, neglect, loss and separation;
- Provide the children with unconditional love and a lifetime of support.
Adoption is only considered possible:
- After all comprehensive efforts are exhausted in returning the child to their birth family,
- Parental rights are terminated, and
- The child is deemed 'legally free' by the District Court.
Waiting Children:
There are more than 60 children at any given time in Jefferson and Arapahoe Counties combined who are waiting to be adopted. In general, waiting children are typically over 8 years old, have been in foster care longer than average and may have more special needs.
Please get to know the children currently waiting to be adopted. For more information about a particular child, please contact the listed caseworker. Every child deserves a 'forever family.'
Foster-to-Adopt Parents
Families who are interested in adoption can also choose to become foster-to-adopt parents, and indicate their desire to adopt a child who is placed in their care if he/she becomes legally free. These families must fulfill all of the necessary foster requirements and work as a foster family with no expectation of adoption.
Adoption Support
Our adoption teams will work to provide resources and supportive services to an adoptive family until the adoption is finalized. County staff will assist with filing legal documents on behalf of the adoptive parents to finalize a child's adoption in the court system. Adoptive families may receive ongoing assistance and referrals to post-adoption resources, based on the child's needs.
Arapahoe and Jefferson Counties do not serve as an adoption agency for private adoptions and cannot facilitate adoptions outside of the child protection system.
For more information about becoming a foster or adoptive parent:
- Review the Qualifications to Foster or Adopt
- Attend an Information Night
