Holiday Greetings! Hard to believe the holidays are upon us again! As we wrap up 2017, we wanted to take a moment to reach out and reconnect with you, our friends, family, clients, and community. A lot has gone on this year and we’re excited to share a bit about it with you. Throughout this year, we have been reminded time and again that it is only because of you that we are able to pursue our mission, and for that we humbly thank you.
As a nonprofit agency, we are dedicated to providing the highest level of service at the lowest cost possible. This can look like, in the case of children with severe special needs, cutting our placement fees to the adoptive family completely, so that they can focus on providing for the needs of their child. Additionally, we are committed to ensuring that each expectant or birth parent who comes to us for support can be cared for at no cost to themselves. In the season of giving, we thought it would be helpful to educate you a bit further on what a donation to Adoptions of Indiana really makes possible.
Brenna is fifteen years old and reaches out to Adoptions of Indiana because she has become pregnant. Brenna meets with our social worker often throughout her pregnancy, she is young, scared, and fragile. Through weeks of counseling and providing support, Brenna determines to proceed with an adoption plan. While this is the most difficult decision she has had to make, she has come to it through careful reasoning and the support of her family. Today, Brenna has a beautiful open relationship with her child and the adoptive parents she chose for her daughter. To us, at Adoptions of Indiana, this placement is a success not because the adoption took place, but because Brenna was educated, supported, and free to make her own decision at every step of the way.
Faith is also a teenager, in her senior year of high school and parenting her months old daughter. She reaches out to Adoptions of Indiana because she is feeling overwhelmed and concerned about being able to provide the life she wants to for her daughter. Faith meets multiple times with our social worker, discussing people and places of support for her and her child. Ultimately, Faith decides to continue parenting her daughter. She knows that it will be difficult and challenging, but she has come to this decision through careful reasoning. To us at Adoptions of Indiana, this conclusion is a success, because, though Faith chose to parent, she was educated, supported, and free to make her own decision at every step of the way.
Our goal is to be the place that women like Brenna and Faith can turn to at their most vulnerable and receive pressure free support, education, and counseling – no matter what their ultimate decision may be. In an effort to reach more women in unplanned or crisis pregnancies, our staff reached out to the leadership of Planned Parenthood for the state of Indiana. After conversations and planning, we launched a program to provide education on adoption options counseling at all nineteen Planned Parenthood locations in Indiana and in Kentucky! Over the past months, staff of Planned Parenthood across the state have received adoption education with open minds and hearts. We are excited to be on-call to travel to any clinic to provide options counseling when a woman requests more information about adoption. We’ve even been asked to provide yearly refreshers to clinic staff for years to come.
As mentioned earlier, a big focus of our fundraising efforts is to underwrite the cost of special needs adoptions, when they are presented to us. In the early fall we got a call from the hospital that a couple were considering adoption for their son who was born with significant health complications. Through weeks of meeting with our social workers and our agency coordinating with others throughout the nation, we were able to connect the child’s birth parents with a couple equipped and ready to provide for the child. In this case, and others we have facilitated throughout the years, we dramatically reduce or even cut completely, the cost of our services. We do this with the knowledge that we have a committed community of support that support our belief that every child deserves a forever home, no matter their circumstances.
As depicted by the cases of Brenna and Faith, our mission is not focused solely on our own adoptive placements, this is not the way that we measure the success of our organization. In reality, we are only able to provide the high level of service we are committed to because of the commitment of YOU, our friends, family, past and present donors, and community at large. Providing this extensive education costs the agency significantly, in addition to the life long no-cost services that are provided to any birth parent who seeks our support. As we embark on this new chapter of outreach and expansion, as we continue to support and educate women on their options and empower their choices throughout of the state of Indiana, we need your help.
We ask that you consider making a donation to ensure that we are able to continue to reach these women at their most vulnerable and inspire hope for their future. We cannot do it alone. Thank you to all who have been committed supporters of our mission in the past, we invite you to further that commitment today.
Thank you and have a blessed holiday!