Since 1944, Bethany Christian Services has been a global nonprofit organization providing foster care, domestic and international adoption, and family services, including pregnancy counseling. It also provides counseling to families, assists refugees and immigrants resettling in the US, and partners with several international countries to help keep families together.
As an adoption social worker for the past five years and lead staff of the State College branch of Bethany Christian Services for more than a year, Robin Regan loves working with families. In her position, she does home studies for domestic, international, and foster care adoption. She trains foster parents for licensing and counsels adopted and preadopted children. In addition, she does postplacement visits and reports for domestic and international adoptions.
Bethany in State College receives about 25 applications a year for adoptions. Most adoptions are domestic, and the international adoptions are of children above age 2 from countries such as China, Bulgaria, Ethiopia, Nicaragua, Haiti, and Uganda.
Born in Urbana, Illinois, and adopted at 2 weeks old, Regan was raised in Ithaca, New York. She did her undergraduate degree in social work at Cornell University and earned a master’s degree in social work from the University of Wisconsin.
She moved to State College in 2002 when her husband, John, accepted a position at Penn State as a professor in environmental engineering. They reside in Centre County with their two biological children, Michael, 21, and Laura, 17, their adopted children, Anjali, 20, Miguel, 17, and Julise, 14, and two foster sons, Thomas, 15, and Dustin, 13.
Town&Gown founder Mimi Barash Coppersmith sat down with Regan at the Corner Room in State College to discuss what it was like growing up in her diverse family and her work with Bethany Christian Services.
Mimi: Included with our February issue is our Parenting publication, so we thought it might be nice to find someone in the community who deals with adoption as a full-time profession. I’m from a family where two of my siblings have adopted children. You are an adopted child. Tell us about the beginning of your life.
Robin: I was adopted at 2 weeks old. My parents actually saw an article in the paper about children who weren’t being adopted, so they got me. They have four biological kids, as well. My sister was adopted from India, and my brother from foster care.
Mimi: Tell me about your parents. They have to be unique people.
Robin: Yeah, I would say so! My dad is a professor at Cornell University. My mom stayed home and raised us. But, of course, she was extremely busy and very involved with seven kids. She was the Cub Scouts leader and Brownie leader. They just love kids.
Mimi: Tell me about your siblings.
Robin: Oh my! My older brother, Todd — he was their first child. He’s actually a professor at Cornell, too. He has two kids. And then I was adopted. Then, my parents had my sister, Tanya. She actually lives in Ecuador with her husband and their four children. My sister, Heather, has four children and lives in upstate New York. My sister, Amy, has six boys, and one of them is adopted. She adopted a little boy from foster care. My brother, Corey, was adopted from foster care, and he has two children. And my sister, Mahima, was adopted from India, and she’s actually married to a British man and they live in England.
Mimi: Wow. And are you married?
Robin: Yes, I am married, and I have five kids.
Mimi: Oh my! Tell me about your children.
Robin: We had our son, Michael, and he’s a senior at Penn State. I’ve always wanted to adopt, being that I was adopted and having adopted siblings, so after we had him, my husband jumped on the bandwagon pretty easily. We adopted our daughter, Anjali, from India. She’s 20 now and in the LifeLink Program at Penn State. It’s a joint program between Penn State and the high school. And then we had our daughter, Laura. She is 17 and a junior at State High. And then we adopted our last two: Miguel and Julise. They are siblings from Haiti.
Mimi: Now what motivated you to do all of this?
Robin: (Laughs) Well, I love kids, for starters. Like I said, when we got started, I wanted to adopt because I had been adopted — I had a chance to have a family.
Mimi: And you had a wonderful life.
Robin: I did have a wonderful life. I love my family so much, and it was a really great childhood — and I wanted to do that for other kids.
Mimi: Have you ever had any dream of knowing your original parents?
Robin: I don’t know. It would be nice, but it’s not something that I pursued. I did register with the state of Illinois, so if any of my biological relatives also registered, then we would be connected. But if they don’t, that would be it for me, whereas my brother looked for his birth mom and he found her. That was important to him. I think it’s different for different people.
Mimi: And how do you feel about that?
Robin: I think it’s important that if there’s an opportunity for kids to know, it’s better for kids to know. And nowadays, adoptions are open and people are working toward getting their original birth certificates, so I did get that from Illinois — I got my original birth certificate and I registered. But for other people, it’s so important to them, and I’m glad that adoptions are more open now.
Mimi: Describe for me exactly what you do in your job.
Robin: I work for Bethany Christian Services. Bethany does domestic infant adoption, foster care adoption, and international adoption. And in my office in State College, I do the home studies for international and domestic infants, and then I also do some of the foster care. And then when they have children placed, I go out and do postplacement reports. We just keep in touch with the families and help them. With the foster care, I actually train the families to become licensed for foster care and adoption.
Mimi: Do people pay for this service?
Robin: For foster care, they don’t have to pay for anything. In the state of Pennsylvania, it’s really great. Bethany provides services for people who have adopted already. It’s called postpermanency services, and the state of Pennsylvania pays for those services. Pennsylvania is a great state to adopt. The international and domestic infant programs do cost money.
Mimi: And who sets those prices?
Robin: Our office, Bethany Global. The head of Bethany is in Michigan, and then the head of Pennsylvania is our director, Mark Unger. There are some certain standardized costs across Bethany, and then some costs that are specific to Pennsylvania for what our legal services cost here.
Mimi: How complicated is it now on the international side?
Robin: International definitely involves the most paperwork and complications. What you have to do is get your home study done, then you need to apply for immigration for the unknown child, you have to go through a process of being certified by the US government, then all of your papers are sent to the country, and then that country’s government has to sign off on all of your paperwork, and then any child that is adopted has to be proven to be eligible for adoption — be an orphan in some way. And so that’s the whole process. Once the child is identified and we have the child’s information, we have to go back to the US government, get a Visa for that child, and then that child can come.
Mimi: How long can that take, on average?
Robin: From beginning to end, that usually takes a couple of years, at least.
Mimi: Wow! The child would be at least 2 years old.
Robin: Yeah. And actually, currently in international adoption, there are very few infants adopted anymore. Most children are above the age of 2 when they’re adopted.
Mimi: With all this controversy about immigration through the United States, how does that impact the world of adoption?
Robin: It doesn’t affect it specifically because when these children are adopted they become American citizens. That’s a new law. When I adopted my daughter from India in 1997, we had to apply for citizenship, but by the time we adopted our two from Haiti, we had to just apply for their certificates.
Mimi: You obviously have a big heart to do this, and even as you talk about it, your whole excitement erupts. How did that happen?
Robin: I think it’s my parents. My parents love children, and, of course, they are adopters — they adopted me and my two siblings. But also, my parents are international travelers, and when I was in high school, we lived in India for a year. That’s where we adopted my sister. And I’ve also traveled through Indonesia with my dad and other places. So I think that I was raised just to be interested in the world and to take care of kids.
Mimi: It’s interesting that your family is an academic family, and your professions are related to your training in higher education. What part of this is anything spiritual?
Robin: I’m a Christian. It’s very important to my parents, and I’m sure it’s true for other religions as well, but in Christianity, it’s very clear throughout the Bible that God expects us to take care of orphans, foreigners, and widows — Old Testament and New Testament. It’s very important.
Mimi: You take the responsibility of doing so. What do you think motivated you? Your parents?
Robin: My parents, for sure. It was always very important to them, and they just had huge hearts. And when we were growing up, yes, they adopted three kids. They had seven kids altogether, but they also just had an open home. We had various people staying with us for different periods of time. And that’s the way I was raised — you know, you take care of your neighbor.
Mimi: Tell me the toughest part of your job. The part of your job that sometimes takes that beautiful smile off your face.
Robin: I work with adoption and foster care, so I’m working with families that are open. For a lot of them, the wait is really long and hard. And then once they have the kids, it can be hard. I do enjoy helping them with that, but I also just feel for them because I know that we’ve had our own difficulties with kids, especially kids either internationally from orphanages or foster care. The kids have traumas and challenges that make their lives more difficult.
Mimi: The first child that you adopted, you didn’t know had special needs. At what point did you become aware of that?
Robin: We got her when she was 2 years old, and so when she came home, she was delayed. And really, if children are raised in an orphanage, they’re going to be delayed, regardless. And so we weren’t surprised by that, and we immediately got her connected with services like Early Intervention, which is always important. When we train families, we expect to use services. So we got her involved in speech therapy, occupational therapy, physical therapy, and she made strides. But in some of the areas, it was a little slower. We had good experts, and they told us, “Why don’t you go get more evaluations done?” We were directed in good directions, and that’s when we found out that she had some intellectual disabilities, but we were in an excellent school district in Madison, Wisconsin, and then we moved here. We were in an excellent school district in State College, and so the services have been wonderful and she is doing just great.
Mimi: Has a job, too.
Robin: Yeah. She does LifeLink, so she’s going to classes at Penn State with mentors — it’s a wonderful program — and she works at the Childcare Center at Hort Woods. She does that on Tuesday and Thursday mornings.
Mimi: Will she get a degree?
Robin: No, it won’t be a degree, but she can go through that program until she’s 21, and then after that, we are going to be looking for her to go into full-time work. She’ll be able to do that. She’s very interested in childcare — she’s very good with little kids, and she takes classes in human development and family studies.
Mimi: What do you do outside of all the dedicated work you do as a mother and advisor?
Robin: As a family, we love to camp, go hiking, and travel. Our family has lived in Chile for six months, back in 2009 for my husband’s sabbatical. We’ve traveled all over the United States, and we like to do that. And for myself, I like to quilt and knit — that’s how I relax.
Mimi: Is your family very religious?
Robin: Yes, we are part of the State College Christian Church, and we’re very involved with the church there. And hopefully we’re raising our kids to fix the world!
Mimi: (Laughs)
Robin: (Laughs) Well, to love others. And I think that the way you show that is by doing, helping, reaching out, and loving your neighbor.
Mimi: What would be the typical cost of an international adoption?
Robin: International adoption is usually somewhere between $30,000 and $35,000.
Mimi: Really?
Robin: Yes. Now the good news is there are tax credits. Any expense that you have for that, you can get tax credits for it. Currently, it’s about $12,000 a year in tax credits for an adoption.
Mimi: Well, that’s still $23,000.
Robin: But I mean, you can get that tax credit each year, and there are also programs that help. If you adopt special needs, there are a lot of grants, special loans with very low rates.
Mimi: And you guide people through the process.
Robin: Absolutely! Yes.
Mimi: One would think from the statistics you just gave me that you’d have to be rich to be able to adopt.
Robin: Yeah, but you really don’t. You have to plan well and you do have to save money to make it happen. One of the things we do as people are in the process, they don’t pay that all upfront. They pay some at the beginning for the home study and when they get the referral. So they have time in between payments.
Mimi: That’s an international adoption. What does it cost for a domestic adoption?
Robin: A domestic infant adoption — that’s our private adoption, not in foster care — that’s usually around $25,000 to $30,000.
Mimi: Wow! I had no idea!
Robin: Yeah. And that also, don’t expect all of that at once — almost half of it is when you have the child placed with you. So it’s spread out to help families.
Mimi: What’s the rate of failure? You know, what’s the expectation?
Robin: Well, we try very hard not to have that happen. With domestic infant, usually that is good. In international, I don’t know that we’ve had any kids in our local offices that been removed from the family, but we have actually helped other people who have adopted through other agencies, and then if there’s any difficulty or people want to disrupt the adoption, we’ve helped place those kids in our families. And we have those postpermanency services in place to help support families once the adoption happens.
Mimi: So they have a place to turn for advice and help?
Robin: Yes, exactly. We go into their homes. We have support groups.
Mimi: Tell me more about Bethany Christian Services. Obviously, its foundation also is spiritual. How does that work?
Robin: Well, it’s a wonderful place to work as a Christian. Of course, we work with families — you don’t have to be Christian to adopt through Bethany Christian Services; it’s not just for Christian families.
Mimi: So this is nonsecular?
Robin: Yeah. The only program that we have anything like that would be our domestic infant program, just because that’s one of the things that we want to be able to tell our birth mothers, is be able to tell them, so they would know if the family is Christian. But you don’t have to be Christian to adopt through foster care or anything like that. I like Bethany Christian Services because they know the people that they’re working with in other countries. They have good relationships, and they also visit often, so we know that we’re working with legitimate and noncorrupt people. We know that when we tell people this is all the information there is on this child, and that is the truth. We get as much information about children as possible. There’s a lot of shady groups out there in other countries that end up getting kids that aren’t really orphaned or aren’t really in need of a family.
Mimi: How large is Bethany?
Robin: Bethany is very large. We have offices in 35 states, and then we are working with five different continents and at least eight or nine countries.
Mimi: Are there many more organizations like yours?
Robin: Bethany is the largest private adoption organization.
Mimi: How did we end up with a local office?
Robin: That’s a good question. I know there is an office in Philadelphia. There’s an office in Pittsburgh and in Lancaster. Our director Mark is a man with a vision, which is wonderful to work with, but he expanded it to now there’s an office in Harrisburg, State College, and Reading. So he’s always looking at ways to reach more families.
Mimi: What a remarkable service, really! What didn’t I ask you that I should have?
Robin: Oh, goodness. I would just say there are a lot of foster kids that are available to be adopted. We used to just do foster care to adopt, and now we do straight foster care, as well, through Bethany.
Mimi: There’s a genuine need in that.
Robin: Yes, there’s a definite need for foster care.
Mimi: Try to describe what would be involved in being a foster parent?
Robin: In foster care, the first thing that you need to do is get licensed, and that involves training. Twenty-one hours of training actually — officially 24 but that includes our orientation program. We do something called PRIDE training, and then there are background checks. We also provide training for siblings already in the home, so that they’re prepared for new siblings.
Mimi: Are there charges for that?
Robin: No charges.
Mimi: It’s all free?
Robin: That’s all free.
Mimi: Where do people go if they want to inquire more about that?
Robin: Right at our office — Bethany Christian Services in State College at 2147 East College Avenue.
Mimi: I have to ask you one more question. What motivates you? Your kids are all grown now, the hard part’s over — so what motivates you to keep going and thriving, doing such complicated work?
Robin: Oh wow! I just really love working with families and seeing families. First of all, the parents are getting to parent, and that’s what their goal is, so that’s wonderful. But really seeing that the kids get homes where the parents are really prepared for what they need and are able to give them what they need, and then those kids thrive in that environment. That’s the other thing about Bethany — other international agencies don’t train their families, and we really do.
Mimi: That’s an important part of the formula! I want to thank you for sharing this with me. I had a good time! Continue to do what you’re doing. It’s a wonderful service.
Robin: Thank you very much!
