- Published: Thursday, May 17, 2012 12:59 PM
In Illinois, the average time a child waits to be adopted is nearly 16 months from the time their birth parents give them up to the time their adoptive parents can legally take them home. Only 10 other states take longer. State Senator Dave Koehler (D-Peoria) is sponsoring legislation to cut the wait time for kids who are being adopted by families approved by the birth parent.
“The adoption process is traumatic for everyone involved—the children, the adoptive parents, and the biological parents,” Koehler said, “and one of the reasons it can be so difficult is that it takes a long time. If we can cut down the wait time safely, we should.”
Koehler’s legislation allows birth parents to willingly give their children up for adoption to people who have already had custody of the kids for at least six months. It contains important safeguards to ensure that the Department of Children and Family Services can deny these adoptions when it believes they are not in the children’s best interests.
“In cases where a foster parent, aunt, uncle, or grandparent has already been caring for a child for months, it only makes sense to speed up the adoption process, especially when the birth parent agrees,” Koehler said.