One of our sons was born missing his right foot. When we were considering his adoption, one of the biggest issues in our minds was the cost of providing him with prosthetic legs. He needs on average one new prosthetic per year at a cost of around $10,000 per leg. That's no small chunk of change.

We were familiar with the work that Shriner's does for children with orthopedic needs, burns, and spinal cord injury. We investigated and were pleased to learn that we would be eligible for help from them, and that all costs would be covered.

As it turned out, our own health insurance was quite good - good enough that we ended up deciding to use local prosthetics services instead of Shriner's. This way we could avoid flying to Salt Lake City every time his prosthetic leg needed tweaking.

Thanks to our good insurance, we pay only about $700 a year as our portion of our son's prosthetic needs, a sum we find doable. However, knowing we had the Shriner's on our side gave us courage to move forward with our son's adoption.

Another resource that is available to adoptive families is the United Healthcare Children's Foundation. This foundation has the mission of helping families whose children have large medical bills that are not covered by insurance.

According to the website, here are some of the criteria for this type of help with medical bills.

- Children meed to live in the US and be 16 years of age or younger

- They must be covered by a commercial insurance policy whose limits have been exceeded or whose copays are a serious burden to the child's family.

- Family income should be no more than $20,000 per family member.

- The amount awarded to an individual within a 12-month period is limited to either $5,000 or 85% of the fund balance, whichever amount is less. Awards to any one individual are limited to a lifetime maximum of $7,500.

Families considering adopting a child with special needs might like to look into these options for assistance.