James Stance, age 14, and Christy Stance, age 7, are siblings who have been in foster care together for 2 years. The court has recently terminated the parental rights (TPR) of their parents, allowing the child welfare agency to proceed with adoption activities. At a meeting subsequent to the TPR order, Jeremy, the adoption supervisor, instructed Geoffrey Wilkins, the adoption caseworker, to manage the case. The team determined that the children's foster home experience demonstrated that it would be in the best interests of the children to be adopted as a sibling group. In this context, when Geoffrey creates a single adoption case for both children. Geoffrey views the adoption case information, verifying that the children's removal and placement records and legal information are accessible from the new case.
Geoffrey uploads the children's information on the statewide adoption photo listing website as his first adoption activity for the children. In response to seeing the children on the state's website, two families show interest in adopting the children: Mark & Mary Jones and Jerry & Sara Mathews. Geoffrey schedules two pre-adoptive conferences so James and Christy meet each family separately. Subsequent to the conferences, Geoffrey recorded that the children's conference with the Jones family went quite well, while it was apparent during the children's conference with the Mathews family that the prospective adoptive family was far more interested in adopting Christy alone than the siblings together.
As a result of the pre-adoptive conferences, Geoffrey creates a visitation plan with the Jones family and the children to schedule multiple visits between them over a 4-week period. After all of the visits are completed and documented, Geoffrey meets with the children and adoptive parents separately to discuss whether they still wanted to proceed with the adoption, which they did.
Geoffrey recommends to Jeremy that the children be adopted by the Jones family, based on the interviews he conducted with the family, their pre-approved status and the successful visits between the children and families. Jeremy approves the recommendation, leading to agency undertaking the subsequent legal activities, which results in the adoption of James and Christy by Mark and Mary Jones. The family may also be eligible to receive adoption subsidy payments based on local policy.