ACF Plus moves to Madison

The Advocates for Children and Families Plus Program is a nationwide program devoted to helping in medically complex adoptions. ACF Plus is one of the only programs of its kind in the country and works across the U.S. to help some of the most vulnerable children.

Previously based in Georgia, ACF Plus held a grand opening for its new location in Madison last month and is now located at Mission Street.

“Our ACF Plus Program is completely dedicated to helping with medically complex adoptions,” said ACF Plus Program Coordinator Jennifer Kelly. “We work with birth families who are facing an unexpected diagnosis of one of their children, either prenatally or postnatally, and just kind of help them walk through and explore their parenting options.”

Kelly said that sometimes helping parents facing difficult diagnoses includes connecting them with resources, and for others, it is working to connect families to adoption options

“Sometimes that means providing specialized resources and support and even some peer counseling, where they have an opportunity to talk to other parents who are raising a child with the same or similar condition, so that they feel empowered to parent,” she said. “That’s always our first approach is to approach ways to establish successful parenting with the biological family. In cases where, for whatever reason, that is not possible, our next step is to start exploring an adoption plan. I work to screen families from all over the U.S. who have approved home studies that specifically license them to adopt children who are medically complex.

“We do a search, we identify appropriate adopted families, present those to the biological parents and then they select the adoptive family that they feel is the best fit for their child,” she said. “Most of my cases are open adoptions, where the birth family and adopted family have direct contact, there are visits, exchanges of information and we have a really healthy and successful outcome for everybody involved.”

Through working with birth families who are navigating difficult medical diagnoses, Kelly said she is able to help the birth parents, the child and adoptive parents to ensure the child lives in the best situation of support for them.

“One of the statistics that I always like to try to share with people is that 80% of the birth families that I work with are married or committed couples with desired pregnancies,” she said. “While most people think of birth families or birth parents as being a young teenage mother or somebody who’s struggling with addiction, homelessness or poverty. That’s not usually the case in the families that I work with, but we have lots of stories where families have done everything that they can to try to figure out a way to parent, and unfortunately, they don’t feel like they can give the child the best possible outcome by bringing them home and parenting them themselves. They feel that the child has a much better chance of having a successful outcome by being placed for adoption.”

Kelly said she is a microbiologist and found a passion for working to help families with medically complex children navigate adoption. Kelly said that after her adopted daughter Joy passed away unexpectedly at 14 months old due to complications from a genetic condition and a heart defect, she decided to use her experiences to help others.

“I needed to do something different after she passed, and an opportunity came to move up here to Madison County and work for one of the biotech companies; I really did genuinely enjoy that work, but there was something missing,” she said. “I needed somewhere to put my grief that made it productive and that helped my daughter’s life to continue to count for something. And the idea was that I would build something that could last as long as her life could have been if she had not passed away, and that would be as beautiful and as impactful as I knew that her life could have been if she had not passed away, so I set out to start helping in medically complex adoption.”

For ACF Plus, Kelly said there are many differences between a typical adoption and a medically complex adoption. Through attending and speaking at conferences, she said she has learned how to best walk with families through this process.

“Since 2013, I’ve helped in some way with more than 1,000 adoptions,” she said. “I have been very proud to be able to still continue to follow some of my adopted families and birth families that check in with me from time to time I tell my daughter’s story almost every time that I give a talk about this work, just because everybody wants to know how a molecular biologists ended up working in such a emotional minefield, social-driven field. But I’m really proud that I’m able to honor my daughter in this way.”

Over her years working with ACF Plus, Kelly said three of the program’s children have passed, which is hard on everyone involved. She said most of the birth families she works with have been turned away by local agencies and that no one would want to adopt their child, but that is not the case.

“A lot of times, the birth families I work with are carrying tremendous grief and guilt and societal pressure because they ‘should be bringing this child home,’” she said. “From somebody looking outside the situation, they don’t understand why a family would be placing the child for adoption. But I’m always really proud of the birth families that I work with, whether they make an adoption plan or not, because they’re willing to do the hard work and take the time to explore what is the best path forward for everybody involved, and oftentimes that includes the other children at home and their needs, the child’s needs and the parents needs and their own limitations.”

With the ACF Plus move to Madison, Kelly said she sees the strong community as a wonderful asset, and she has seen how Madison has rallied for its people.

“I’ve been really proud to be a part of the Madison community since I moved here in 2014 but I’m excited to have the ACF Plus cause be something that hopefully Madison residents are ready to rally behind,” she said. “We really need help spreading the word about our program, so that birth families know that we’re here, and that adopted families who are open to adopting children who are medically complex know that we’re here. Then also, of course, financial assistance, our program operates at a loss, we do still charge adoption fees because there are so many costs associated with adoption, but we fundraise to help keep those costs as low as possible.”

To learn more about ACF Plus, visit acfcares.org/acf.

“One of the biggest ways [to help] is honestly helping spread the word,” Kelly said. “You never know who might be considering adoption. We need adoptive families, and we need people to spread the word so that birth families know that we’re here.”