How would you approach profile book

str8ota

We are currently working with MH's NA Tribe's adoption placement agency, which is 5 hours away (in his home town) from where we live.  They have all of our paperwork from when we were fostering through DHS with the State and as of last week we are officially approved by the tribal board and in their system if a match comes up. Because we do not live within the certain counties they cover, we are not eligible for fostering, only adoption.  This means it will be mostly children whose parents rights were terminated and there are no relatives who want to take in the children. Also, if any birth parents comes in looking to give up their young child or unborn baby, we would also be considered a match.

Since we don't have the normal one-on-one with them, I recently asked if it would help for me to send family pictures to them and they said yes.  Then I asked if it would be better if we make a profile book and they said that would be great.  I was told to keep it simple, no specifics, just really basic about us.  Of course when I look online all I see are very extravagant profile books.  So now I'm kind of confused what to put together.  Any suggestions?

bumpuser794640

I would suggest one page about your marriage (wedding date, years married) with several pics of you as a couple. A couple of pages about your home w/ pics, a couple pages about each of you (hobbies, employment, etc. & pics), a few pages about your extended families, pages about your pets if you have any. Include info about your family traditions, etc.

jenbabe

Our first adoption the agency requested that we do a photo book through Shutterfly or something similar for our profile book.  It was about 30 pages, mostly photos but a brief story about us.  This time we are doing private adoption through a law firm and they wanted our profile book about 5 pages, mostly in writing with a few pictures.  We always have had our profile start with a brief letter to the reader explaining why we want to adopt, what kind of life we would provide for a child and they type of relationship we hope to have with birthfamily.  Then we tell our story, how we met, what our family is like, what type of community we live in, and our hobbies.  The best tip I can give is to be yourself and don't stress out about it.  My husband is a farmer and everyone has always told us not to focus much on that because people don't like it.  But both times we were chosen because the expectant mom wanted her child to grow up on a farm.  So don't listen to advice from other people and put yourself out there just as you are, don't try to impress anyone. 

Dr.Loretta

Our profile when we adopted was only 2 pages. The first page was a picture of us, and a brief bio of each of us (age, occupation, hobbies). There was a very brief Dear Birthparent letter. The other page was various pictures of us and our families, home, pets, etc., each with captions.