Adoption
Birth Parents
Making the process best for you and the baby
Look to 26Health to shepherd you through the process, helping you understand your rights, finding an adoption attorney, and getting you the financial support you need pre-during-and-post-birth. You drive the type of adoption you wish to have: closed, semi-open, or open. And you help decide if you want your infant to go to virtually any parental household you feel will be best for the baby.
How can I afford to have a baby?
As your pregnancy progresses, we ensure you have the necessary funds for your personal needs, health, and infant’s health. We even help you to budget any payments you receive during the adoption to ensure you have the means to support your return to the workforce or enrollment in school as you move forward with your life.
What if I change my mind?
The Florida Statutes allows you to change your mind about adoption at any time before you sign over consent, which can only happen 48 hours after you have given birth. That said, as a licensed Florida adoption agency, we want to help you determine well before the birth, whether adoption is right for you, so you feel confident in your choice. 26Health Adoptions provides counseling during your pregnancy, labor, delivery, and even beyond the adoption’s finalization.
Birth parents of older children
Are you a parent of a toddler or an older child and are considering adoption? 26Health Adoptions offers advice about placement, legal matters, and the adoption process for birth parents of older children. We can also help with counseling or social support services.
We consider our support for the “birth triad” to be balanced and in service of birth parents, parents, adoptees, and adoptive parents.
Considering Adoption?
Learn what steps prospective parents take in the adoption process.
Our service to prospective adoptive parents starts with our home study. This allows us to help you determine your expectations for adoption which start with whether you want an infant, older child or even older siblings. Often adoptive parents find, during our home study, that they are open to a broader range of options than they thought — wanting to fulfill their desire to provide a loving home to children far more than any specific criteria or notion they had about traits their adoptive child should have.
Your Protection
With 40+ years in the service of adoption, we are here to support your journey, but also to protect you as much as possible.
Sadly, there are less scrupulous persons who will try and get multiple adoptive parents to support an infant-birth-to-adoptive-parent situation. In this situation a birth parents may have promised her child to multiple parents to receive multiple fees. We work to protect you from this situation with our 40+ years experience and ability to suss out when this might be happening.
Also, birth parents can change their mind about adoption at any time until legal consent to adoption is given, witnessed and notarized after the 48-hour consent waiting period post-birth. Again, our 40+ years’ experience helps us to minimize these changes in mind as we provide our birth parents with counseling and support if they find themselves doubting their choice.
We consider our adoption for babies and parenting adoptive children support for the “birth triad” to be balanced and in service of adoptive parents, adoptees and birth parent or parents.
FAQs
What makes 26Health adoption services unique?
From the start, 26Health has been dedicated to families and villages. Our goal is to bring adoptive parents, birth parents, and adoptive children together in a safe, lawful and supportive way. We ensure everyone comes away content with all decisions made throughout the process.
How does 26Health support the parties to adoption?
We aren’t simply a placement agency — we are a matching agency. With infants, we work with both adoptive parents and birth parent to bring the right pairs together and ensure the safety, health, legality and security of all. We also have relationships with organizations who provide us the chance to find homes for older children, often older siblings.
What kinds of adoption do you offer?
26Health adoption services offer the three typical types of adoption.
A closed adoption is one where neither the birth mom nor the adoptive family know each other or meet each other. It’s usually at the request of the birth mom. The birth parent might request periodic photos or written updates just to see that the child is healthy and well, but otherwise,the parties do not make contact.
In a semi-open adoption, a mom typically wants the adoptive parents to meet her before the birth and be at the hospital when the baby is born. They want a transition to the adoptive parents that they are involved in at the hospital. Once it is time to leave the hospital, post-contact is minimal; the birth parent might want periodic updates, but usually no contact with the adoptee or adoptive parents.
An open adoption typically occurs with both adoptive parents and birth mom know or have known one another in a prior social setting: neighbors, friends or otherwise who may make a mutual decision to become a “birth triad” of birth and adoptive parents and adoptee.
How do we know you’re a trustworthy adoption agency?
26Health is a member in good standing of The Florida Adoption Council, a non-profit corporation composed of individuals involved in adoption in Florida, governed by a Board of Directors and dedicated to the adherence and ongoing education of its members in relation to adoption laws, rights and requirements.The organization has a network of attorneys, social workers, agency directors, and counselors that have been held to the highest standards of adoption facilitation since 2001.