Open Adoption is a Win-Win Situation

I’ve been providing open adoption services for 32 years, and I’ve adopted a baby myself. At Lifetime Adoption, we handle mostly newborn adoptions but we also help children who would otherwise go into foster care. Lifetime does eight to 10 adoptions a month all over the United States. The main office is in California, and we have a satellite office in Florida. We cry every day and we laugh every day at Lifetime Adoption; you really need to have a passion for adoption. Half the phone calls we get are crisis calls and we had one not very long ago where the woman was dying of cancer. She had no extended family and she needed to find a family before she passed to adopt her three children and keep them all together. It’s important to us that sibling groups remain together. It was a really tough thing, and we had to be very sensitive. The children were two years old, three years old, and seven years old. We needed to find a family that’s very sensitive so that they could stay in contact with their mother until she passed and acclimate the children to their new lives. This transition time is really important.
 
The process for the birth family involves selecting a family from a large selection of our adoptive parents. They’ve all been pre-screened and all have home studies done. Birth mothers contact Lifetime through phone, live chat, on our website or on social media and share their situation and what they’re working with. There’s no cost to birth parents or birth grandparents that are raising these children. The fees are paid by the adoptive parents wanting to adopt. These are permanent adoptions, not foster care. My goal is to have permanent homes for these children.
 
Many years ago, I lost seven pregnancies, went through a tremendous amount, and ended up adopting. Then, I started helping people 32 years ago now. I have a passion to help other people and I kept getting phone calls “can you help me?” Women would come to me too, saying “I can’t parent my child, but I want to.” Birth mothers aren’t bad people, they’re putting their interests to the side. They’re asking themselves “what’s best for my child?” and “what can I give them?” before CPS steps in. That’s the biggest thing right now because then they lose the opportunity to have that ongoing contact.
 
With a Lifetime adoption, you can have contact with your child afterward. It’s a safe adoption; kids aren’t confused. They know who their birth parents are and they know who their adoptive parents are. Open adoption is a win-win situation. The nice thing is you get all the medical information too, the children aren’t confused, and they have more peace about it because they know they’re loved by their birth parents. They don’t hate their birth parents, which is one of the things that people worry about. 
 
We do tell people, “this is a lifetime adoption; not a week-long adoption.” It’s a real commitment and people who really want to adopt need to do the research on it. I have written five books on adoption, and I’ve been on all the major stations (Today Show, Larry King, ABC, FOX, NBC, BBC) talking about adoption as an adoption expert.
 

Are you interested in interviewing Caldwell about modern, open adoption? Contact American Carriage House Publishing at 1-866-986-2665.