How long does this take?

I have attached a few good sites where you can find a lot of information. For me, it took a year to get licensed, a year to get a child placed in our home and another year to finalize adoption. Technically, you could get licensed in as little as 3 months, have a child placed with you immediately and adopt after 6 months. I have never seen it happen that fast but that would be the fastest.

Adopting from foster care is not an easy process but it can be done. There is a great need of people willing to adopt teenagers. Both of the links I have posted have photo listings of children who are in need of adoptive families. Looking through them will give you a good idea of what children are available. There are also forums there that you can read and ask questions on.

Here's the process

1. Foster/adoption training class. It may be called MAPP or PRIDE. This is usually a 6-12 week course.

2. Get a home study done; this can take a few months (mine took 6 months), and can't be started until you've finished your training class

3. Along with the home study, you'll be background checked.

4. Get matched with a kid; this is the long part of the process; since you're willing to take a teen, you're much more likely to find a quick match than someone who's waiting on an infant, or even a 5 year old. My wife and I were stuck on this step for about 1.5 years. This is the place where a lot of people get discouraged, because there's really noone advocating for you at this point other than yourself. I HIGHLY suggest looking for an adoption support group at this stage; Central florida has an awesome one run by an adoption recruiter with One Hope United and Wendy's wonderful Kids.

5. Once you're matched, you have a series of visits (usually a couple from each category, though this is played by ear)

-supervised visits

-unsupervised visits

-overnight visits

-full weekend visits

6. If everything is going well during the visits, adoption placement occurs, and the child moves into your home. At this point you get paperwork allowing you to authorize minor medical procedures, get school records, etc.

7. after a period (90 days in Florida), you can finalize the adoption.

I am English so I can't give much advice but take a look at this site http://www.adoptuskids.org/

Good luck, I hope it works out well and I respect you for wanting to adopt a teenager.