Choosing an adoption agency can be a mind boggling experience. Forever Parents adoption forum member and pal, Lori Dowd of Best Light Adoption Profile Review shares things to keep in mind while you’re considering which agency to use.
Needless to say, this is one of the biggest decisions you face, because you need to go where your child will be. My advice is to follow both your head and your heart. How?First, your head. Research the agency by interviewing its counselors and asking to speak with both adoptive parents and birthparents they have served. Things to ask:Ask the Agency
1. What’s the shortest wait you’ve had? What made it so short?
2. What’s the longest wait? Why do you think this couple had such a long wait? What did you do to help them?
3. What is a typical wait?
4. How many couples do you have actively waiting at one time?
5. How many placements did you have last year?
6. How do expectant parents find you? (What is the agency doing to be visible?)
7. What is your counseling approach for expectant parents? (No pushing — only providing information and supporting.)
8. How often do expectant parents decide not to proceed with an adoption after being matched with adoptive parents?
9. At what stage of the pregnancy do you suggest expectant parents choose adoptive parents? (Many professionals suggest not entering a match until at least 7 months into the pregnancy. Expectant parents go through a lot of ups and downs, and you don’t want to be riding that roller coaster for more than 2 months.)
10. Please explain your fee schedule. (A large portion — up to 1/3 of the total — should be due only after placement.)
Ask Adoptive Parents
11. How long was your wait?
12. What kind of grief counseling did the agency offer you? (Expect some support in healing from infertility so you are ready to parent whole-heartedly).
13. How active was your agency? (e.g. was there a stream of expectant parents looking at profiles?)
14. What kind of after-adoption support is available? (Look for an agency that provides post-adoption counseling or parenting classes as part of the supervision process — very helpful).
15. What kind of relationship do you have now with your child’s birth family?
Ask Birth Parents
16. How did you come by your decision to make an adoption plan? (A good agency will let the expectant parents take the lead and not push them into ANY option. This is CRUCIAL to reducing the risk of expectant parents changing their minds. The decision HAS to be freely made, and I would run fast from an agency that puts pressure on expectant parents to “give up” a baby.)
17. To what degree did you feel supported by the agency?
18. If you had a friend who was pregnant and needed help deciding what to do, would you recommend this agency?
19. How did you hear about the agency? (You are trying to see how visible the agency is to people in unintended pregnancies.)
20. What kind of relationship do you have now with your child’s adoptive family?
Look for healthy situations where both parties feel well-served and well-represented by an agency. A good agency will make the adoption process collaborative (with the child as the focus), rather than adversarial (where one side’s loss is the other’s gain).
After you gather the facts, let your heart weigh in on the decision. Sit quietly and find out what your intuition tells you. If you have a “feeling” about an agency, go with that feeling. Adoption — like parenting — is a very intuitive process. Adopting with your head and heart will prepare you to parent with your head and heart.
Copyright 2006 by Lori Dowd, MA.
BestLight Adoption Profile Review
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All these questions that you have listed in here will surely help me finding the best adoption agency. Let’s hope for best.
Good luck! Please post any questions that you may have.
After a very bad exp with an agency in texas I would add to the list of thing to ask an agency is:
How many failed matches did you have last year.
How many couples have you worked with this year. There is a differance between how many they have waiting and how many they have worked with. If they tell you the have 40 waiting families that does not sound too bad, but add the 25 they have already placed and that puts you in a pool of 65 families.
Also, you DO NOT have to pay the large signing fees anymore. There are agencies out there that only require a fee of $500. No fees untill match. This will afford waiting families the ability to work with more agencies and get more exposure. DO NOT sign nonrefund contracts. There is a reason this agency needs to lock you in.
Avoid agencies that have fancy websites and attend adoption conf. They are spending too much time looking for more families and not birthmothers