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Can Your Family be a Resource for a Special Baby?
Please complete our Client Pre-Application and
forward your Home Study to ASAP.
Fax number 212.360.0282
Or mail to:
ASAP
Spence-Chapin
410 East 92nd Street
New York, NY 10128
The Adoption Resource Library contains recomended books and articles by adoption professionals, birth parents, adoptive parents
and adopted children, who share their unique insights.
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Special Needs Adoption
It is a special kind of adoptive parent who embraces the unique challenges of parenting a special needs child.
Spence-Chapin seeks families who are interested in raising a special needs child, and who have the desire and talent to help that child flourish.
Since 1995, ASAP, Spence-Chapin’s domestic special needs program has placed more than 300 infants in loving homes. These children come from diverse backgrounds and have a variety of issues ranging from risk of developmental delays to serious medical conditions. Spence-Chapin also places international waiting children.
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Our Families In Their Own Words
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Meet Our Staff
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Our son Michael has Down syndrome. My husband Doug and I had so fallen in love with him that we asked our special needs social worker to consider us for the placement of another baby with Down syndrome. When we were contacted that our (now) daughter, Nicole, was a possible match with our family, we were thrilled. We were so happy to meet Nicole’s birth parents on the day of her placement and pictures we took that day proudly sit on our daughter’s dresser. Nicole has extraordinary love… from our family, as well as from her birth parents, who continue to give her love and encouragement with phone calls, letters, gifts. It is wonderful to be able to share Nicole’s life events and milestones with her birth parents through pictures and letters. We would encourage adoptive parents to strongly consider the benefits of open adoption. Nicole receives preschool services… with occupational therapy, physical therapy, special education, and speech therapies thirty minutes each week, and we look forward to her attending our local elementary school in a fully inclusive kindergarten classroom when she is five. Nicole is now three years old, and has a delightful personality. She is determined to continually learn new skills and activities. She is outgoing, independent, says several words and also uses American Sign Language. It is a joy and pleasure for us to be her parents, and we wouldn’t want to imagine our lives without our daughter Nicole.
Our son Michael has Down syndrome. My husband Doug and I had so fallen in love with him that we asked our special needs social worker to consider us for the placement of another baby with Down syndrome. When we were contacted that our (now) daughter, Nicole, was a possible match with our family, we were thrilled. We were so happy to meet Nicole’s birth parents on the day of her placement and pictures we took that day proudly sit on our daughter’s dresser. Nicole has extraordinary love… from our family, as well as from her birth parents, who continue to give her love and encouragement with phone calls, letters, gifts. It is wonderful to be able to share Nicole’s life events and milestones with her birth parents through pictures and letters. We would encourage adoptive parents to strongly consider the benefits of open adoption. Nicole receives preschool services… with occupational therapy, physical therapy, special education, and speech therapies thirty minutes each week, and we look forward to her attending our local elementary school in a fully inclusive kindergarten classroom when she is five. Nicole is now three years old, and has a delightful personality. She is determined to continually learn new skills and activities. She is outgoing, independent, says several words and also uses American Sign Language. It is a joy and pleasure for us to be her parents, and we wouldn’t want to imagine our lives without our daughter Nicole.
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Merryl Klein
Adoption Specialist
“Spence-Chapin is one of the few agencies in the country placing significant numbers of domestic infants with special needs. Families who come to our program wish to parent infants because the early months can often be critical to a child’s development. They are people who are child-oriented, who feel they can use their creative energy to nurture and help a child with a disability become all that he or she can be, and to ensure that their child knows they are loved unconditionally.”
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