Foster Care vs. Adoption: What's Right for Your Family?

Maybe you've been thinking about bringing a child into your home. Perhaps you've attended an informational session, or a friend shared their fostering story, or you simply feel ready to take this step. Whatever brought you here, you're facing a significant question: Should you foster or adopt?

Both paths provide safe homes for children who need them. Both involve working with Illinois DCFS. Both require training, commitment, and heart. Yet they're fundamentally different journeys with different goals, different timelines, and different emotional realities.

Understanding these differences helps you make the right choice for your family, one that aligns with your capacity, your emotional readiness, and what you can realistically offer a child.

The Quick Answer: Which Path Fits Your Family?

Choose Foster Care if:

• You can provide temporary, loving care while supporting a child through their journey
• You're ready to help children in crisis right now
• You can emotionally handle reunification when it happens

Choose Adoption if:

• You're prepared to make a permanent, lifelong commitment to a child
• You want to become their legal parent with full parental rights
• You're building your family forever

Choose Foster-to-Adopt if:

• You're open to providing foster care with the possibility of adoption if reunification doesn't happen
• You're comfortable with uncertainty
• You can support whatever outcome serves the child's best interest

Foster care provides temporary support during crisis. Adoption involves permanent family building. Neither path is easy. Both change lives. The right choice depends on your emotional readiness and the commitment you can make.

Understanding the Difference

Here's what each path really looks like.

Foster Care: Temporary Safety and Stability

Foster care provides temporary, safe homes for children who cannot stay with their biological families due to safety concerns. When Illinois DCFS determines a child needs protection, that child is placed with a licensed foster family. During this time, DCFS works toward reunifying the family whenever it's safe to do so.

The primary goal of foster care is reunification. Nearly half of all foster children are reunified with their families within 12 months [1]. When you become a foster parent, you're part of a team working toward that goal, even when it means eventually saying goodbye to a child you've grown to love.

Your role as a foster parent:

• Provide a safe, stable home during a family crisis
• Support the child's emotional and developmental needs
• Facilitate visits and maintain connections with their birth family
• Work with caseworkers, therapists, and other professionals
• Help prepare the child for their next step, whether that's returning home, moving toward adoption, or another permanent placement

This requires an extraordinary capacity to love a child deeply while accepting that they may leave. When reunification succeeds, you've done exactly what foster care is designed to do.

Adoption: Permanent Family Building

Adoption creates a legal parent-child relationship that lasts forever. When you adopt, you assume full parental rights and responsibilities. The child becomes part of your family legally, emotionally, and permanently.

Adoption from foster care is often more accessible than people realize. Let It Be Us operates under a statewide contract with Illinois DCFS, managing the Adoption Listing Service of Illinois to connect children who cannot return to their birth families with permanent, loving homes [2]. Through the Heart Gallery of Illinois, you can see profiles of children and teens actively waiting for families right now.

Your role as an adoptive parent:

• Provide a permanent, forever home
• Assume full legal parental rights and responsibilities
• Support the child through adjustment and healing
• Build lifelong family bonds
• Access post-adoption services and support when you need them

The adoption process typically takes six months or longer and involves evaluation, home study, and court finalization. Illinois law requires a minimum six-month placement period before adoption finalization, during which the child lives with the prospective adoptive family to ensure the placement is in the child's best interests. Children of any age can be adopted in Illinois, from infants to teenagers.

What Really Differs Between Foster Care and Adoption?

Legal Considerations

Foster Care:

When you foster, the state maintains legal guardianship of the child. You have day-to-day caregiving responsibilities, but major decisions (medical procedures, travel, education changes) often require caseworker approval or birth parent consent. This shared authority is necessary because the goal remains reunification.

Illinois requires foster parents to be at least 21 years old. You can be married, in a civil union, single, divorced, or separated. The licensing process includes background checks, 27 hours of training, home inspections, health screenings, and demonstration of financial stability.

Adoption:

Adoption gives you full legal parental rights. You make all decisions about the child's education, healthcare, religion, and upbringing. The child takes your last name, receives a new birth certificate, and legally becomes part of your family.

The adoption process in Illinois involves a Petition for Adoption, home study, and court proceedings. Factors the judge considers include how the child interacts with you, their adjustment to your home and community, and (when relevant) the wishes of birth parents and existing family ties.

If you need decision-making authority and permanent parental rights, adoption is your path. Foster care works when you're comfortable with shared authority during temporary placement.

Emotional Readiness

Foster Care:

The emotional reality of foster care is intense. You welcome a child who has experienced trauma. You help them heal, attend therapy appointments, learn what helps them feel safe, and celebrate their progress. Then, if reunification succeeds, you support them as they leave.

Here's what many prospective foster parents don't fully grasp until they're in it: foster care requires an extraordinary capacity to love a child deeply while accepting that they may leave. This fear of attachment loss is the most common concern among families considering foster care.

The truth is, you will become attached. That attachment is exactly what these children need to heal. Foster care asks you to hold that love while accepting impermanence.

Adoption:

Adoption carries the emotional weight of lifelong commitment. When you adopt, you provide permanent care and build a family. This means navigating attachment challenges, identity questions, and the ongoing work of helping a child feel like they truly belong.

Children available for adoption from foster care often have experienced significant trauma. Some are older children or teens. Many have what we call "pain-based" behaviors, responses to trauma that show up as behavioral challenges. They may have medical needs or developmental delays. Adoptive parents need to be prepared for these realities while providing the unconditional love and patience healing requires.

Foster care suits families who can love fully while releasing gracefully. Adoption fits those ready for permanent commitment through whatever challenges come.

Financial Support

Foster Care:

Illinois provides foster parents with monthly board payments to help cover the child's needs, including clothing, food, personal expenses, and daily care. Foster children also receive healthcare coverage through the state, including medical, dental, and mental health services.

The monthly support is meant to offset the real costs of caring for a child, not to generate income. Community-based foster agencies in Illinois currently face insurance challenges that affect capacity, which means the need for foster families remains high.

Adoption:

Adoption from foster care is significantly less expensive than private infant adoption. Many families qualify for adoption assistance subsidies that provide ongoing financial support after adoption.

For families adopting through Let It Be Us and the Illinois DCFS system, financial support is available. If you use an attorney from the DCFS Adoption Attorney Panel, there are no out-of-pocket legal fees or court costs—DCFS pays directly.

For families adopting a child from Illinois DCFS custody but completing the adoption in another state, DCFS can pay your local attorney directly up to $2250 per child (including court fees, filing fees, and attorney fees), as long as the attorney agrees to wait for payment until after finalization. If you pay these costs out of pocket, you must request reimbursement [3].

These financial supports help ensure that finances don't become a barrier to providing permanent homes for children who need them.

Both foster care and adoption offer financial support. Foster care provides ongoing monthly stipends. Adoption may qualify for subsidies, particularly for children with special needs.

Let It Be Us: Your Partner in Both Journeys

Let It Be Us is Illinois's premier foster and adoptive parent recruitment agency. We provide support whether you choose foster care, adoption, or the foster-to-adopt pathway. Complete this form to begin your journey: https://letitbeus.org/become-a-foster-parent-form/

What Makes Let It Be Us Different

Statewide Services:

• Is an Illinois licensed child welfare agency
• Operates under a statewide contract with Illinois DCFS
• Provides adoptive resources, recruitment, and placement services
• Works with both private agencies and public caseworkers throughout Illinois
• Serves as a bridge that connects families with children who need homes

The Heart Gallery of Illinois:

• Features children and teens actively waiting for adoptive families through the Heart Gallery of Illinois
• Showcases real young people with personalities, interests, dreams, and incredible potential
• Highlights older youth and sibling groups who need families ready to provide permanent, loving homes

Technology-Driven Matching:

• Uses sophisticated matching technology to connect caseworkers and families for better placements
• Employs data-driven approach rather than placing children with the next available family
• Improves placement success rates and reduces disruptions

Free Educational Events:

• Hosts regular online informational events, webinars, and Q&A sessions. Register here: www.letitbeus.org/events
• Helps prospective families understand the foster care licensing process and adoption requirements
• Provides honest information so you can make the right decision for your family

Support for Specialized Placements:

• Hosts events addressing the needs of youth with diverse medical requirements
• Features expertise from DCFS's medical director and other specialists
• Demonstrates commitment to supporting families caring for children with complex needs

How Let It Be Us Supports Your Decision

Whether you're exploring foster care or adoption, Let It Be Us provides:

• Clear guidance on licensing requirements and processes
• Connection to agencies throughout Illinois for foster licensing
• Access to children waiting for adoption through the Heart Gallery
• Ongoing support from your first questions through placement and beyond
• Honest information about what each path truly involves

Let It Be Us welcomes all families, including single parents, married couples, LGBTQIA+ individuals and families, renters, and people from all backgrounds and professions.

Which Path Fits Your Situation?

Here's how to think about your specific circumstances.

Scenario 1: You're a Nurse or Teacher with Experience Working with Children

Consider: Foster Care (particularly therapeutic foster care). Register here: https://letitbeus.org/become-a-foster-parent-form/

Your professional background makes you especially valuable for children with medical or behavioral challenges. You're already familiar with complex needs, and therapeutic foster care programs provide additional support and compensation. Let It Be Us actively seeks licensed nurses and teachers for these specialized placements.

Therapeutic foster care allows you to provide a stable, supportive, home-based environment for children who have experienced more profound trauma and need greater support to manage their mental health and healing.

Also consider: Foster-to-Adopt lets you provide therapeutic foster care with the possibility of adoption if reunification doesn't happen.

Scenario 2: You're Ready to Grow Your Family Permanently

Consider: Adoption

You want a child to become part of your family forever. Adoption provides the permanency, legal rights, and family bond you're looking for. Working with Let It Be Us and the Heart Gallery, you can browse profiles of children and teens actively waiting for forever families.

Also consider: Foster-to-Adopt if you're open to providing foster care first, with adoption as the goal when the child becomes legally free for adoption.

Scenario 3: You're Already a Licensed Foster Parent

Consider: Adoption (You're a "Gold Star" Family)

You've completed the licensing process and understand the child welfare system. You can immediately engage with Let It Be Us's adoption services without needing additional licensing. Your experience makes you particularly valuable for children with complex needs, older youth, or sibling sets, populations that most frequently need placement.

Also consider: Continue fostering while exploring adoption opportunities for children in your care who become legally free for adoption.

Questions to Ask Yourself

Before choosing your path, consider these factors honestly:

Capacity to love while releasing:

• Consider whether you can love a child deeply while supporting their return to their birth family
• If this feels too difficult emotionally, direct adoption might be the better path
• Foster care may fit your family if you can embrace this emotional reality

Need for decision-making authority:

• Consider whether you need full legal parental rights and decision-making authority
• Adoption provides these rights
• Foster care works if you're comfortable with shared authority during temporary placement

Emotional preparedness for uncertainty:

• Consider your preparedness for uncertainty about permanency
• Foster-to-adopt offers flexibility for those comfortable with uncertainty
• Direct adoption provides certainty from the start

Timeline considerations:

• Foster care addresses urgent needs right now
• Adoption involves long-term family building
• Both are needed. Both matter.

Your Next Step: Connect with Let It Be Us

Both foster care and adoption change lives, the child's and yours. Neither path is easy. Both require commitment, training, support, and heart. The right choice depends on your family's readiness and what you can realistically offer a child.

Let It Be Us is ready to support you through either journey. We provide honest answers, comprehensive guidance, and ongoing support from your first questions through placement and beyond.

How to get started:

1. Attend a free Let It Be Us webinar to learn more about both foster care and adoption
2. Visit letitbeus.org to explore upcoming events
3. Browse the Heart Gallery to see children waiting for families
4. Take the first step toward opening your home and heart

Whether you choose to foster, adopt, or walk the foster-to-adopt path, Illinois children are waiting for families ready to open their homes and hearts. Let It Be Us is here to support you. Your journey can start today.

References

[1] Illinois Department of Children and Family Services. "Foster Care – Illinois DCFS." https://dcfs.illinois.gov/loving-homes/fostercare.html

[2] ABC 7 Chicago. "Let It Be Us Opens Doors for Foster Care Adoptions in Illinois." https://abc7chicago.com/post/chicago-let-us-opens-doors-foster-care-adoptions-illinois-based-barrington/16616628/

[3] Illinois Department of Children and Family Services. "Guide for DCFS Adoptive/Guardianship Parents." June 2025. https://dcfs.illinois.gov/content/dam/soi/en/web/dcfs/documents/loving-homes/adoption/documents/guide-adoptive-guardianship-parents.pdf