I’m going to be a guest on Creating a Family radio show January 20, 2010.
We’ll spend a full hour discussing how to choose an adoption agency, facilitator, or attorney.
I’d love to respond to your questions about how to choose an agency, as well as to share experiences from those of you who have recently worked with an agency, facilitator, or adoption attorney.
I’m giving away a selection of my books to several random people who suggest questions or share your own experiences (both good and bad experiences, please). Books I’ll be giving away:
- The Adoption Decision: 15 Things You Want to Know Before Adopting
- The Adoption Network: Your Guide to Starting a Support System
- Handbook on Thriving as an Adoptive Family: Real-Life Solutions to Common Challenges
)
Here are some possible questions you might respond to:
- What were your top 3 factors in choosing an agency, facilitator, or attorney?
- Was working with a local adoption professional important to you?
- What differences in adoption fees did you notice as you investigated particular adoption professionals?
- Did you check references? If so, who did you ask? What did you learn?
- What red flags would prevent you from working with a particular adoption professional?
Please respond in the Comments area for this post, or e-mail me via the Contact page on laurachristianson.com.
You might win a book… or multiple books… as my thanks for submitting a comment and helping me prepare for this show.
Creating a Family is a nonprofit providing education, resources, and support for infertility and adoption.
One of the primary services offered by Creating a Family is a weekly one hour national radio show: Creating a Family: Talk about Adoption and Infertility. Half of the shows are about adoption and half about infertility.
Director Dawn Davenport says:
“This show is now both the # 1 rated adoption podcast and infertility podcast on iTunes. We are very proud that the Creating a Family show received awards from both the US Department of Health and Human Services and the Congressional Coalition on Adoption in 2009.”
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Over the past six years, I’ve worked with six different adoption agencies. (Three adoptions–one finalized. Couple of moves to a new place. Made for a lot of experience with different agencies.)
If I was to start over again — I’d spend more time finding a social worker I liked versus an agency I liked. The social worker was the one we spent the most time with — hours in our home, and then she was the one who wrote all our paperwork. She was also the one to ‘go to bat’ for us when needed. All that to say, I’ve worked with several different social workers, but there were a couple who were much easier to relate to who also did a good job with the detail side of things. This kind of info can be found out only by asking around, or by taking the time to get to know the social workers first.
My wife and I adopted twice through a local agency. We chose to work with this agency in part because we could simultaneously participate in their domestic and international programs and both programs were well-established and large. Although we matched quickly in the domestic program in both cases, it was nice to know we could easily switch to the international program if our profile was not seeing much activity.
Although we did not think about this at the time, another consideration might be what type of relationship you want your child to have with his or her birth family and how close you want to live to your child’s birth family. A local agency that networks locally will likely result in an outcome that differs from an agency in another state that advertises locally in that state or an agency that advertises nationally. We are thrilled that our kids’ birth families are close to us!