The Impact For Families

The Children’s Home Adoptive Parents:

The Children’s Home has been a critical part of my family for years. Before having kids, the Children’s Home was known in my professional community as the best organization to refer clients to if they were considering placing a child for adoption. They were known to provide the best counseling and support for birth parents, and I referred several pregnant patients to the organization.

When we were ready to have kids and found we couldn’t do so biologically, my first thought was to call The Children’s Home. Adoption can be hard and complicated for many reasons, but I knew using The Children’s Home I wouldn’t have to worry about the ethical problems of birth parent coercion or think about the adoption as a business transaction. Our two newborn adoptions through the organization were wonderful. We have good relationships with our children’s biological families, which I credit to the work of the Children’s Home. They counseled and prepared both the adoptive and biological families to set us up for success in developing a long term relationship that benefits our shared children.

The support of our social workers was invaluable during the adoption process, in the transition period before finalization, and in the years since, as any challenging parenting situations have arisen. We are so grateful for the work of The Children’s Home. I hope they can continue to help families for decades to come.

My children are both covered by Medicaid in Pennsylvania and have been since birth. One of my children required special therapies for the first few years of her life, and all have been covered 100% by Medicaid. Medicaid case managers have also been in touch occasionally through the years to provide anticipatory guidance, help us arrange dental care, reminders of upcoming visits and vaccinations, educate on oral hygiene, and much more. Without Medicaid coverage, my kids would have been able to have insurance privately from my work, but the costs to my family would have been significantly higher, including premiums, copays, and coinsurance. Additionally, having consistent Medicaid coverage has enabled my children to see the same pediatricians and care team throughout their childhood, rather than switching providers when our employer-sponsored insurance changes over the years. My children’s’ good health and thriving is due in part to the Medicaid coverage they’ve had since birth, and now continuing through their adoption subsidy. Medicaid has experience and expertise in supporting families with special needs children, in a way that would have been much more challenging in a private insurance environment. We’re very grateful to the ongoing coverage and support we receive from the state.

-The Children’s Home Adoptive Parents

Lori Stansal Collins:

My name is Lori Stansal Collins and I, along with my late husband, adopted our son in June of 2022. The Children’s Home of Pittsburgh not only helped facilitate the adoption, but also provided us with support and resources as we navigated the complexities of adopting an older child with medical needs. Moreover, as a child adopted from foster care, my son has thus far been a recipient of Medicaid, which provides children like him with the support and care he needs. I am writing to you to today to share our story, and how the proposed cuts to Medicaid would not only impact but reduce the quality of my son’s life.

My son spent five years in the foster care system before joining our family. Prior to his placement in foster care, he was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes. Referred to in the diabetic community as T1D, this is an autoimmune disorder in which the pancreas is unable to create the hormone insulin, which is responsible for regulating the body’s blood sugars. Unlike Type 2 diabetes, T1D is a life-long illness for which there is no cure. Individuals with T1D (including my son) must monitor their blood sugar throughout the day and administer insulin in order to regulate said sugars. Managing this disease is a daily challenge and does not allow for even one day to go by where it is not at the forefront of the child and parent’s minds.
From the moment he was placed in foster care, my son was fortunate enough to be a recipient of Medicaid, which ensured that he and his foster families were able to manage his diabetes and afford him a healthy childhood. Upon his adoption to our family, Medicaid similarly allowed us to continue to help him navigate this disease and provided us with access to the life-saving medication and tools he needs to manage it. To give some context, an individual with T1D requires the following on a day-to-day basis: insulin (both short and long-acting); blood glucose monitoring devices; blood glucose test strips; lancets (for blood glucose testing); syringes (for insulin administration); insulin pump supplies, including cartridges and needle/cannula); ketone test strips; and glucagon (similar in concept to an Epi-pen, this is an emergency treatment for a life-threatening low blood sugar). These are supplies that must be refilled on a monthly
basis in order to allow the individual with T1D any measure of a normal, healthy life. Insurance companies are often unwilling to cover some (or worse, any) of these medical supplies, which leaves families paying thousands of dollars out of pocket. Until insurance reform takes place, Medicaid allows individuals with complex medical needs access to what they require in order to keep them alive. Moreover, for individuals like myself, Medicaid is a necessity when inability to afford top-tier insurance premiums and cost-prohibitive out-of-pocket expenses cripple our ability to provide what our children need. Four months after our son’s adoption was finalized, my husband was diagnosed with aggressive pancreatic cancer. Four months after that, my husband died. Losing my son’s dad and my husband was devastating. But one thing that I never needed to worry about was how I was going to keep my son healthy, because Medicaid covers all of his medical needs. Suddenly being a single mom on a single income was not in the plan, but Medicaid has afforded me the peace of mind and security knowing that my son’s health is not at risk. The proposed cuts and potential loss of this security places an undue burden on families who are just trying to give their medically-compromised children the childhood and life they deserve.
Another challenge in adopting an older child from foster care is that there are often other developmental, social, and behavioral challenges that they experience as a result of their lives prior to being removed from their home. These challenges often require extensive counseling and/or medication(s) to help the child flourish. In our case, my son has severe ADHD, as well as significant learning challenges. Medicaid has enabled me to get him into a pediatric behavioral health program that specializes in ADHD and is helping him develop the strategies needed to succeed both academically and socially. To lose access to this kind of specialized service would be to the detriment of my son’s well-being, as he requires intensive assistance that would be unaffordable to me otherwise.
The proposed cuts to Medicaid will hurt those who need it the most. My son is just one of many children who stand to lose so much if they lose their coverage. Throughout the challenges my son and I have faced in recent months, I have never had to worry about his health, as Medicaid has ensured that his
complex medical needs are covered and he is well-cared for. To take that away from him (and all the others like him) would show a stunning lack of compassion and care for the future of our society. I implore you to listen –really listen – to your constituents and to the people when they share their stories. As I tell my son, be kind, make smart choices, and do good things. My son has already been deprived of a normal, stable childhood. He has been deprived of more time with his dad. Please don’t deprive him of his health and his future as well.

Tonia and John Autieri:

My husband John and I have always wanted a family.  Unfortunately, having a biological baby was not an option for us and The Children’s Home of Pittsburgh is the reason we have our beautiful little boy Jackson.

We tried for years to have a baby and due to some health complications and unexplained pregnancy losses, we decided to go through the adoption process.  When I looked up top adoption agencies in Pittsburgh, The Children’s Home of Pittsburgh was at the top of the list.  I also had friends who had used TCH and felt that this was the agency for us.

The Children’s Home of Pittsburgh’s adoption agency is fantastic.  It taught us so much about the process of adoption and prepared us for adopting a child and going through an open adoption.  We went through classes in the program and were assigned a social worker, who was fabulous.  He was knowledgeable, supportive, and there if we ever had a question, concern, or just to talk.

When we finally had the opportunity to have a child placed with us, we agreed to an open adoption.  It wasn’t an easy transition.  We faced many challenges with the birth mother and The Children’s Home was there for me and John.  Without their continued support, I do not believe we would have contact with our son’s birth mother today.   Because of some of these challenges we experienced, The Children’s Home offered to have neutral site meetings with our son’s birth mother and also have a social worker present during the visits.  I cannot express how this has changed our lives.  We are so grateful to have the support of the Children’s Home as we move through this journey.  Without them, we honestly don’t know what our situation would look like today.  Knowing that they are available for us is truly a blessing and we do not take it for granted.

Our son Jackson is an amazing boy.  He is thriving and we cannot imagine our lives without him.  We have never felt so much love for another human being.

When Jackson was placed with us, we had some developmental concerns, so he began in Early intervention when he was a little over a year old.  Although we have insurance as a family, Jackson receives medicaid and this has been a comfort for us in case anything he needs may not be covered under our family insurance.  Jacson sees a Speech therapist and Occupational therapist outside of preschool.  He wears orthotics (SMOs) and has had some other health needs that have all been taken care of up to this point.  Knowing that whatever he needs to thrive will be covered is again a great comfort for us as a family.

We want Jackson to have every opportunity to be happy and successful in today’s world.  We will do whatever we can to make this happen, but it would never be possible without the services that The Children’s Home provides or the medical assistance that is available for Jackson if he needs it.

The Children’s Home not only supports children and their needs, but they support families as well.  The Children’s Home of Pittsburgh has been an integral part in building our family and it continues to be a huge support for us moving forward in our adoption journey.

Adoption Family:

When we were fostering our daughter, Medicaid was an incredible help to our family. Adopting and caring for a new baby can be incredibly expensive, and as we navigated the fostering process, Medicaid provided much-needed coverage for medical expenses. It helped relieve a lot of financial stress, allowing us to focus on providing a stable, loving home for our daughter. Before she was adopted and added to my insurance plan, Medicaid ensured that her healthcare needs were met without burdening our family. It truly played a vital role in supporting us during that transitional time, making the journey smoother and more manageable.

Faith, Sofia’s mom:

I have no idea how I would be able to keep my daughter alive without Medicaid funding.  She has multiple practitioners, adaptive equipment that I could never afford without Medicaid, outpatient therapies, recurring illnesses requiring hospital admissions, scheduled surgeries, daily and as needed medications, incontinence products, feeding tube supplies, specialized formula and nutritional needs, to name a few of the benefits Sofia receives covered by Medicaid.

Our primary insurance only covers “basic” health needs that a “typical” child without complex medical needs would need to have covered, and even sometimes those basics are denied.  Even with the Medicaid coverage as a secondary insurance I still have multiple medications and supplies that I have to buy out of pocket for Sofia.

What would my life be like without The Children’s Home?

My name is Faith, I am an Executive Kitchen Manager for a corporate restaurant group and the proud mom of my three year old daughter Sofia.  When I was pregnant with Sofia, I had what is considered a high risk pregnancy but the genetic testing was not covered by insurance; Sofia’s ultrasounds all looked great so there was no room for concern, but when she arrived she was having major unexplained health complications, even though the pregnancy was full term.  The genetics department at The Children’s Hospital in Pittsburgh did a full workup and about a month later Sofia was diagnosed with a rare genetic condition called partial trisomy syndrome.  To this day we have not found anyone with the exact same karyotype as Sofia, so managing her health has been reactive rather than proactive and we have no idea what to expect.  She ended up having a 79 day NICU stay because of multiple diagnoses including failure to thrive, obstructive sleep apnea, and high risk for aspiration/severe reflux.  She has had several operations including a feeding tube and open heart surgery.  Because she was so medically fragile we were extremely concerned about our ability to care for her, and with us both being in the restaurant industry working long and odd hours we were unsure of how we could manage the care she needed.  Through a social media mom’s group I found out about Child’s Way, the medical daycare facility at The Children’s Home.  We did a tour and knew Child’s Way was the perfect place for Sofia.  What we really love about Child’s Way is that it looks and feels like a “typical” daycare- the students there are not treated like patients and it does not feel like a medical setting, but there is a nurse in every classroom and all of the equipment needed including a 5 minute ambulance drive to Children’s Hospital for emergencies.  Leaving Sofia at Child’s Way gave us peace of mind that we could go to work knowing she was in safe hands.  When Sofia got close to being discharged from the NICU our concern was having the confidence in our ability to manage Sofia’s care.  After all we had an entire team of medical professionals working around the clock and at home it was just the two of us with no medical background.  Fortunately we were invited and eligible to stay at TCH Pediatric Specialty Hospital as a bridge between hospital and home to allow us to learn how to be not just parents, but qualified caregivers for Sofia.  We stayed around two weeks learning how to administer her medications, manage her g tube feeds, how to fortify her milk, how to provide her with a safe place to sleep, how to administer infant CPR if needed, and how to react when her monitors alarmed.  The best part about the Pediatric Specialty Hospital is that it feels more like a home setting and less like a hospital, but you have the peace of mind that you are not alone in caring for your child with special medical needs.  Meanwhile, Pediatric View at CHP came to do a bedside screening for Cortical Visual Impairment because of Sofia’s neurological health and we were made aware that Sofia was showing onset signs of CVI.  Not only did I have no idea at the time what CVI was, her vision was one of the few things her medical team were not concerned about because she passed all of her eye exams in the NICU.  Had Pediatric View not intervened, we would have never known that Sofia has CVI, she likely would have been misdiagnosed and I would not have been able to advocate to get Sofia the services she needed to set her up for success in using her vision.  To this day I partner with Pediatric View for advice, assistance with advocacy, and best of all innovation in the field of CVI.

The Children’s Home has become our home away from home.  To think of where we would be without this incredible organization feels like trying to imagine growing up without your own family.  I am forever grateful for the connections we have made, the services Sofia has thrived from receiving, and the impact The Children’s Home makes each and every day.

Adoption Family:

For us, The Children’s Home is quite literally the reason why we’ve been blessed to have the family we have. After a disrupted private adoption and the financial loss and emotional turmoil that followed, we were a bit lost about the future that we saw for ourselves. When we found The Children’s Home, what struck us immediately was the compassion, the kindness, the patience, and the understanding that everyone we spoke with exuded.

It was completely different from what we had been used to. Unlike an agency that deals solely in private adoption, The Children’s Home sees every component of what it means to bring a family together and to provide a permanent happy home for a child. They see the struggle and trauma of children in foster care, they see the heartbreak of families dealing with infertility and reevaluating how to start a family, they see the emotional ups and downs and the need for ongoing trauma-based care. The Children’s Home is not about business; it’s about family, and we cannot reiterate how much that meant to us. No matter how many cases we wanted to explore, no matter how many questions we had, we never felt pressured and it was always clear that the people we worked with were determined to stay by our side until the right match happened. We came into this process expecting to start our life with one infant child; in February of this year, we celebrated the one-year anniversary of adopting our three incredible siblings, aged 9, 10, and 11. It was a very quick process; we were matched on a Friday, the kids moved in on the next Wednesday, and they had been through a lot. In addition, they had come from a home that had impressed very negative stereotypes and opinions of LGBTQ+ individuals, and so we were scared that the kids would never accept having two dads.  Our social worker went out of her way to actually talk to the kids about all the great things about having two dads that really cared about them, and she made what could have been awkward and uncomfortable feel normal and natural. One thing that we will never forget about our adoption day was how our social worker showed up to the court house with a gift for each of the kids, and looking over and seeing tears in her eyes as the judge declared our adoption finalized. We didn’t feel like part of her job; we felt like part of her family. We were nervous, going from two bachelors to a family of five. We doubted ourselves at times, but the people at The Children’s Home gave us the confidence and support we needed to keep this family strong and together.  They reminded us that every parent will make mistakes and have moments when they second-guess their decisions, but if you are guided every day by the love you have for your kids, then you’re giving them exactly what they need. They answered all of our frantic emails with questions that in retrospect seem kind of silly, they coordinated their visits with the school and other agencies so as to have minimal disruption for the kids, they provided Christmas gifts and access to extracurricular activities to help the kids feel a sense of belonging and normalcy, and they helped us to get the kids set up with therapeutic services that they required to help with the adjustment to a new life.  Even when a difficult discussion had to be had about the termination of parental rights and how adoption was going to be different from the years they spent in foster care, our social worker was there to navigate us through it together. And even after our children were adopted, The Children’s Home didn’t just cut us loose and stop being a part of our lives. We have gone to other activities that they’ve sponsored, and what’s so incredible is that our children get to see other families like theirs, to realize that they aren’t alone and that while our family is very unique, they still belong and have value. We could never summarize in just a short paragraph what exactly The Children’s Home means to us, but every single day, through the ups and downs, we watch these amazing children grow and we know that it’s because of The Children’s Home that we found each other and five lives were forever changed for the better.

      As foster parents, it is not possible to add foster children to our insurance. Without Medicaid coverage, children risk being uninsured and foster parents could potentially be faced with a situation in which they either get the child the medical attention they need and potentially crush themselves financially, or they ignore important medical checkups because they can’t afford it. Within the first couple of months of being foster parents, we had a child in the ER for suspected appendicitis and then again for a newly developed severe food allergy. Without Medicaid, we would have had to front those costs on our own, and that’s in addition to all of the costs that come with having to provide clothes and toys to three school-aged children who arrived with nothing but one bag each. Foster care can sometimes happen literally overnight, and an emergency can happen at any point; without Medicaid, the very real risk is that these children go without medical care when they need it because people who want to do the right thing by opening their homes to a child in need cannot financially afford the cost of health care on their own. And that’s not even mentioning the value of Medicaid when it comes to psychological care, which almost every child in the foster system will need at some point. Denying a child who has been through trauma access to mental health care will have devastating effects on their growth and development. It could stunt that child’s progress and also increase the risk of that child having a future devastated by academic deficiencies, drug use, violence, crime, and a litany of other problems that can stem from untreated trauma. All three of our children needed this care, and I can only imagine the bill we would have received without Medicaid and the decisions we would have had to make about what we could or could not provide for our children. The children in foster care have already been through more than any child should ever have to endure, and not being able to take care of their very basic needs, their physical and emotional well-being, is something that should never, ever be on the table.  If you were to tell a foster parent that they would be responsible for finding their own way to care for these needs without any assistance, what will the state of foster care in this country look like? How many people who might otherwise provide a loving home for a child decide instead that they can’t take the risk? As a result, how many more children will age out of the system or spend their adolescence in a group home rather than their own bedroom because as a society we’ve made it more difficult for a potential foster parent to afford a child’s care? Plain and simple, if society doesn’t invest in caring for these children now, the cost to society in the future will be astronomically higher.