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!

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.