Adoptive Parent of 17 Answers "Barriers to Adoption" question

I just realized that you cannot edit comments, leading me to go with this approach to posting responses from people who email me privately.

Kelly, Adoptive Mom of 17, lists these top three barriers to adoption from foster care:

1. ICPC laws that drag the process out for months and months and months.
I have heard too many stories of parents or older prospective adoptive
children dropping out of the process because of lengthy delays.

2. Scary reports by professionals who give increasing numbers of labels
to children in foster care. While it is always helpful to know the
challenges that your potential child might face, it is not helpful to have
so many diagnoses and labels and that task appears impossible - unless, of
course, it is. Prospective parents need to be educated on the realities
of the diagnoses and labels - including the most effective methods for
coping with them in a family setting, appropriate therapeutic options and
lists of contact information to make it all happen.

3. An uneducated public that doesn't understand how adoption works.
Adoption is permanent. We are not the "step parents" or "foster parents."
We are the real parents who are working hard to raise our children the
best way we know how. And, no matter what their challenges, we love our
children and want them to be happy and successful in life.