Adoptive Family Articles

Learn how to choose the adoption professional that is right for you.

• Good law firms provide for safe and solid legal work, making the adoption more secure. 

• The advertising mediums available to individual families are much less effective than those available to adoption agencies. (Keep in mind the largest national agencies who buy advertisements at a discount, track carefully their marketing success, have qualified counselors talking to birth mothers, and have major networking contacts still average spending $8,000 to $10,000 in advertising for each successful adoption. Therefore you should expect to pay more in advertising through a law firm especially if the ad is placed on your own)
• Placing ads individually puts more money at risk if a birth mother is not located.
• Families should expect their advertisments to be far less effective and many prospective adoptive families complain their ads did not yield any inquiries.
• Law firms often bill hourly, meaning their fees are at-risk if the adoption doesn’t work out.
• Most law firm’s cost estimates are the best-case scenario and rarely reflects that their clients often experience several disruptions and therefore can lose thousands of dollars before an adoption succeeds, meaning those losses will be added to the fees for a successful adoption.

• Families are concerned about waiting times.
• Clients don’t want to endure many, or any, emotional or financial disappointments from adoptions that don’t work out.
• Families want to set a budget for their adoption and don’t want to have a bunch of variable, hidden or at-risk expenses.
• Every family wants to pay as little as possible, without sacrificing safety, time or service.
• Most clients want a healthy child with no special needs.
• Most families have race, age and/or gender preferences.
• Some clients want to help children overseas.
• Most families are concerned about birth parents changing their minds or countries closing their operations.
• Most want to work with an experienced professional who can guide and protect them through the adoption process.
• All families want to join an organization that is reliable, safe and stable. 

Learn more about adoption law centers and whether this type of adoption professional is right for you.

Learn more about national adoption agencies and whether this type of adoption professional is right for you.

Learn more about small local and regional adoption agencies and whether this type of adoption professional is right for you.

Learn more about adoption facilitators and whether they are the adoption professional for you.

Learn how adoption organizations are regulated.

1. Counseling or case management is provided by staff with no counseling or social work related degree. Would you have a mechanic perform heart surgery on your spouse, simply because the mechanic is good with his hands?
2. Counseling is provided by a counselor who may be experienced in adoption but doesn’t have much experience in working with birth parents. Just because a doctor performs surgery does not mean he has performed many heart surgeries. 
3. Only 10% of the adoption professionals primarily counsel birth parents, the remaining focus on home study or legal parts of the process.  Of those 10% who have experience counseling birth mothers, less than 1% counsel more than 10 birth mothers a year.  Would you feel comfortable going to a heart doctor who only performed a few heart surgeries a year or would you rather go to the best heart doctor in the world who successfully performs hundreds a year?   
4. The organization doesn’t make counseling or case management mandatory. Find out below why this can be devastating.    

A home study is a review of you, your spouse, and anyone else living in your home. A home study is required for almost every adoption. It highlights items such as relationships, interactions with children, your neighborhood, and your childhood. Initially, the home study process frightens some families until they actually complete one.