OPEN ADOPTION

Lutheran Social Services assists in open adoptions in which birth parents and adoptive families create healthy lifelong relationships that address the ongoing needs of each adoption triad member:  birth parents, child and adoptive family.

• Birth parents choose and meet the adoptive family.

• Through the support and guidance of an LSS adoption counselor, the birth parents and adoptive family build a foundation for a healthy lifelong relationship.

• The birth parents and adoptive family create a trust agreement that outlines ongoing communication and contact as well as exchange of pictures and letters with one another.

• Birth parents design their open adoption according to their comfort level of openness.  It is their plan for their child.

What are the advantages to open adoption?

The ongoing contact and communication enables the birth parents to see for themselves that their child is thriving in the adoptive family home.  This reaffirms the reason why the birth parents created this plan for their child.  Secure in the knowledge that birth parents fully support the adoption the adoptive family are free to welcome the birth parents into their lives.  The most significant piece of this relationship is the child's ability to have direct access to information and support from the birth parents:  allowing for the child's development of self esteem and the child's identity.  There are no secrets kept from the adoptive person in the adoptive triad in an open adoption.