Placing Siblings for Adoption [Sibling Adoption Guide]

Choosing adoption is never easy. Many women considering adoption are in challenging situations — whether that’s due to an unplanned pregnancy or an unforeseen crisis while parenting.

For many prospective birth parents, adoption is both the best thing to do and the hardest thing to do. If you’re thinking about placing children for adoption together, then we want you to know that you’re not alone. There are professionals who can help you, and there are ways to make sure your children are placed with loving, safe families.

We’ve created this guide for anyone wondering how to “give up” children for adoption. Once you know how the process works and who can help, the prospect of putting children up for adoption may seem a little less overwhelming and a little more hopeful.

If you’d like personal answers to specific questions about your situation, you can reach out to us at any time to be connected with a professional.

How to Put Up Kids for Adoption

Some steps of placing multiple children for adoption will be the same as any other adoption process, and there will also be some differences. We’ll get more in-depth on those differences in just a minute. But, for now, let’s go over the big steps that every prospective birth parent has to follow when they are “giving up children” for adoption:

Step 1: Choose Adoption

Are you sure that placing multiple children for adoption is the best thing to do? We ask not to discourage you, but because once you choose adoption, you need to be 100% committed. This process takes strength and certainty. Going into the process when you are still on the fence will make it much more difficult.

Adoption can be the best way to create better opportunities for yourself and your children in the future. The goal of step one is to think long and hard, reaching a point where you can say, for sure, “I want to put my children up for adoption.”

Step 2: Find an Agency and Create Your Adoption Plan

Next, you’ll need to find some help. This help comes in the form of an adoption agency. The agency guides you through the process for placing children for adoption. There are plenty of agencies to choose from, and many prospective birth parents go with a national adoption agency for their large staff and greater abundance of resources and experience.

Step 3: Pick an Adoptive Family

Working with the agency, you’ll create a list of things you’re looking for in the adoptive family. When putting your kids up for adoption together, you’ll want to find families that are open to adopting all of your children at the same time. An agency can help with this.

The agency will gather up a group of adoptive family profiles that fit what you are looking for. You can look at as many profiles as you need to until you’ve found the right family.

Step 4: Complete Placement

Once you’ve chosen a family, you’ll have the opportunity to get to know them a bit through pre-placement contact. Completing placement looks different in every situation, but the most important part is signing your official consent to adoption, which relinquishes your parental rights and clears the way for the adoptive parents to assume legal responsibility for your children.

Step 5: Post-Placement Contact

Did you know that most adoptions today are at least semi-open? This means that “giving kids up” for adoption doesn’t mean giving up your connection with them. You can maintain that contact through letters, emails, phone calls, video calls and even in-person visits.

Every adoption is unique, but they all follow these steps. As we’ll see below, there are a few key things that can change your experience when you are putting your kids up for adoption.

Place Multiple Children for Adoption: Things to Consider

Now you know the steps that take place in the process for placing children for adoption. But, sometimes it can be different when you’re thinking about how to “give your children up” for adoption at the same time. A sibling-set adoption has a little bit more to consider, including these three major factors:

Age of Your Children

At a certain point, adoption is no longer a viable option. While we’re not going to tell you it’s totally impossible to place an older child in a private adoption, we will say that most private adoption agencies do not place children over 4 years old. If you have a newborn and an older sibling, there is a chance that only the newborn could be placed for adoption.

Importance of Siblings Staying Together

Research clearly shows the importance of maintaining siblings groups in adoption placements. If you are placing multiple children for adoption, the goal should be to place all of them with the same family. This may limit the number of available adoptive families, but it is worth it.

When thinking about putting kids up for adoption, make sure to ask any potential agency how they handle sibling group adoptions. Will they do everything possible to keep the siblings together? Do they work with adoptive families that are open to sibling group adoption?

Importance of Maintaining Contact if Siblings Can’t Stay Together

If there’s not a situation for putting your kids up for adoption with the same family, then the next best thing is to find ways for the siblings to stay in contact. If one child stays with you, then this can happen through open adoption communication with the adoptive family. If two different families adopt your children, then it can be part of your adoption plan that those families would have ongoing communication.

How to “Give Children Up” for Adoption

That’s a lot to consider. You may be feeling a bit overwhelmed and wondering how to pull all of this off. That’s where the adoption agency comes in. The most important step for how to put the kids up for adoption is working with an agency that will guide you to all of the correct decisions.

When looking for an agency, make sure to ask them how they handle sibling group adoption, and if this type of adoption is something they have experience with. Many prospective birth parents find that national adoption agencies have more experience and more adoptive family profiles to look through.

If you’d like to learn more about a few of the leading national adoption agencies for prospective birth parents, consider one of these:

Get Connected with an Agency

If you’d like to learn more, you can contact us today to be connected with an adoption agency. This connection is always free, and you are never obligated to choose adoption.