Since there are over 3,000 domestic adoption professionals across the United States, choosing one to use for your adoption can be a very challenging decision. It's best to initially have an understanding of the types of services offered by domestic adoption professionals so you can best decide which specific professional is best for you. Some adoption professionals offer full services, while others offer only partial services, leaving you to locate and set up the additional services needed for your adoption on your own. You can determine how much of the adoption process you want to have arranged for you by choosing the type of professional from the start.

What type of services are included in an adoption?

Services include the following:

• Advertising- The process of locating the birth parent(s).
• Adoptive family services- Home study services, counseling, education and support provided to the adoptive family prior to locating a birth mother, during the match with a birth mother and post-adoption. Placement or matching services are also provided to a family.
• Birth parent services- Counseling, education and support provided to the birth parent(s) during the pregnancy and post-birth.
• Medical services- Locating and monitoring appropriate medical services needed for the birth mother and baby.
• Living expenses- Assessing and distributing any financial needs to the birth mother during her pregnancy.
• Legal services- Court services needed to legally complete an adoption.
• Other expenses- Setting up additional services such as mailing costs, foster care, travel, etc.
• Hourly or fixed fees- The process in which you are billed for services.

Advertising

Who will handle the advertising?

The following are typical options:

1. The adoption professional places the ads for the family and charges a flat fee for their services to each family they work with. The positive to this style is that there is a financial limit on the amount you spend for the advertising. The negative is that some professionals do not spend enough on advertising or do not know the most effective ways to advertise in order to locate birth parents, which can result in the adoptive family experiencing a longer waiting period. Be certain to determine the amount each adoption professional spends on advertising and what specific types of advertising they use.
2. The adoption professional places the ads for the family, but you pay for each advertisement individually as needed until you receive a match with a birth mother. One positive with this method is that you can typically promote your family individually. The negative is that many individual advertising mediums are less effective than advertising mediums available to professionals who utilize a wider spectrum with their advertisements.
3. You place the advertisement and pay for the advertisement. If you choose this type of method, the professional should provide you clear direction, otherwise you will spend thousands of dollars with little results. The positive is you can promote your family individually and control the amount you spend. The negative is that you will likely spend a lot in advertising with limited results.

*Typically larger adoption agencies provide the best advertising options for a family.

*Adoption attorneys are typically not involved in the advertising process for a family.

What is the most effective advertising strategy?

It is important to find a professional who fully understands marketing, networking and advertising. Failure to secure a professional who understands these factors will leave you spending much more on advertising than you need to spend. Advertising for birth mothers can include advertising in phone books, newspapers, magazines, Internet, Web sites, pregnancy centers, billboards, etc.

Adoptive Family Services

What types of services can be provided to the adoptive family?

Home Study Services:

Every family pursuing an adoption needs to have a current home study in order to legally adopt a child. When utilizing an agency, it is a potential that the agency could complete both your home study and placement of the child, however this is not necessary. It is also acceptable to utilize a separate adoption professional when having your home study completed from the one you choose to handle the placement of your child. This is because an adoption agency must be licensed in your state to perform home study services, however, the child placing agency typically does not have to be licensed in your state to place a child with you. You might be asking yourself what benefit could come from choosing to use a separate placing agency and home study agency. One example of how this could benefit a family is when a family chooses a local adoption professional to complete their home study, but would not want to utilize their services for the placement because their local agency is small and would not provide the best potential to adopt quickly. For that type of family, they would potentially benefit from utilizing a larger agency that was able to work with birth mothers across the county, which would maximize their exposure to birth mothers, therefore increasing their chances of adoption.

Education and Support Services:

While you will receive some support from your home study professional, it is important to research the type and degree of support the actual adoption professional will provide. Some professionals, such as facilitators and attorneys, provide very limited emotional support, although there are exceptions to this rule. As for adoption agencies, all services are not created equal. Some agencies provide very good education and emotional support while others lack in this extremely important area. It is helpful if you investigate the type and frequency of this support you desire from the adoption professional during your adoption process. Some questions you might ask the adoption professional in order to gage their level of experience and levels of support they will provide include: How many adoptions do you handle on a monthly and yearly basis? How will you prepare my family for the steps in the adoption process? How available are you to our family in the early stages to answer our questions? What type of counseling can you offer our family if we need additional support after being matched with a birth mother? Will you be available to my family in the years to come as we have additional questions about raising a child who has been adopted?

Placement or Match Services:

Some adoption professionals work only locally while others provide adoption services across state lines. The process can be different because working across state lines often involves more adoption professionals in the process. Involving more professionals isn't necessarily a bad thing as long as contacting and coordinating with these professionals isn't your responsibility. In other words, if a professional works across state lines do they simply refer you to that professional or do they act as the coordinator and arrange everything on your behalf? Adoption professionals who work across state lines are also able to reach out to more birth parents.

Birth Parent Services

What types of services can be provided to the birth parent(s)?

Intake Services

Intake services involve the first contact made from the birth mother when she is initially considering an adoption choice. At this stage, the birth mother is only considering adoption as an option and is in need of education and support to help her make an informed decision based on all of her options. Properly assessing a birth mother's commitment to an adoption plan requires many years of experience. If the birth mother's commitment is not properly assessed, this could contribute to an unnecessary adoption disruption(s) for your family. Many birth mothers are also in a crisis position during the intake stage and are in need of guidance to proper resources to assist them in an immediate time manner. The intake is the most important part of the process not to mention the most intrusive if you have to field calls at home. If you are deciding to field calls at home, make sure your professional provides a comprehensive training on how to respond and what to say. If your adoption professional is handling the intakes, find out what their hours of availability are to answer those intake calls. Find out how easy it is for a birth mother or yourself to reach them after hours. Make a good assessment of how the adoption professional sounds on the phone because if you do not feel they have been welcoming to you during your phone calls, the chance that a birth mother will be turned off by them is very likely. Find out how much experience the adoption professional has working with different types of birth mothers. Find out what others have to say about their experiences with the adoption professional.

Counseling and Case Management:

After you've located a birth mother and have received a positive assessment of the birth mother's commitment level to an adoption through the intake process, the support to the birth mother continues to be needed. Consider what would happen if your professional did not provide these services or offer it as an option? Attorneys are not social workers and tend to handle case management very differently than a social worker would. Some attorneys do hire counselors to provide support to the birth mother as well, but you'll want to find out at what availability to the birth mother. Adoption agencies believe it is important to explore numerous issues and obstacles to help a birth mother become confident of her adoption plan and are typically available 24 hours a day, seven days a week to the birth mother. Attorneys tend to look at adoption cases as handling the legal work and only offer counseling on an as-needed basis. In a similar way, facilitators provide intake services, but rarely offer case management or counseling services for the birth parents unless it is offered by the attorney who they will refer your case to. The net result is adoptive families typically experience more disappointments with attorneys and facilitators than through agencies. There are naturally exceptions to this rule, but it is an important factor for you to consider.

Medical Services:

In some cases, birth mothers already have Medicaid services set up and are receiving appropriate prenatal care, however many do not and need assistance in arranging for these services. You will want to inquire with your adoption professional to find out if they will assist the birth mother in obtaining Medicaid and/or prenatal medical care. In many cases, birth mothers qualify for Medicaid, which typically means there will be no birth mother medical bills. Other birth mothers have partial coverage through private medical insurance and will require the adoptive family to pay for any medical bills not covered by her insurance. In some instances, the baby will also qualify for Medicaid, however, some states do not allow a child who is being placed for adoption to qualify for Medicaid coverage. In those cases, the child's medical bills become the responsibility of the adoptive family or the adoptive family's insurance. It is helpful to the adoptive family for the adoption professional to assume the role of encouraging the birth mother to seek proper prenatal medical services and to assist the family in the appropriate avenues to take with medical bills that are not covered through insurance. Another service that an adoption professional can provide is to request the birth mother's medical records from her prenatal appointments and also from the delivery of the baby. Providing those to the adoptive family for review is an important step. Attorneys and facilitators often do not assume all or any of these roles.

Living Expenses:

Most states allow for a birth mother to receive assistance for living expenses from the adoptive family. There are however a few states that do not permit the birth mother to receive this type of financial assistance. The assistance with living expenses typically has to be distributed to the birth mother through the adoption professional. The adoption professional should help the birth mother create a budget of her needs so that you will know the estimated amount from the beginning. The adoptive family would then provide the adoption professional with the money so that they could distribute the expenses to the birth mother as needed. Typically, these fees have to be court approved, which the adoption professional would handle. Most adoption professionals provide a breakdown for each expense for an adoption and will itemize the birth mother's living expenses, which is typically in addition to the adoption professional's fee. There are some professionals who include living expenses in their fees, however this usually results in higher agency fees.

Legal services:

Legal fees and services vary from state to state and court to court. One would think that the adoption legal process would be similar from one jurisdiction to the next, but in reality the legal process varies significantly. Because of the varying legal processes, it is important to pick an agency and/or attorney who is very experienced in adoption. Legal fees are certainly the last place anyone should be looking to cut costs. Make sure you choose a professional with solid experience and a good reputation.

Other Expenses:

There are sometimes miscellaneous expenses such as foster care, mailing costs and travel associated with many adoptions. Adoption professionals vary on how these are itemized and charged to their clients. Some included these charges in their fees and others itemize them.

Hourly or Fixed Fees:

Some professionals charge hourly for their services. This can be either an advantage or disadvantage. The advantage is that you will typically pay lower expenses if you find a birth mother quickly and if few services are provided. One disadvantage is that you will typically pay higher expenses if you don't find a birth mother quickly and if more then average services are required. Another disadvantage is that you will likely pay the adoption professional fees on an hourly rate even if the adoption does not happen. As for fixed fee professionals, it is important to understand that while their agency fees may be fixed there will always be variable expenses. The advantage of fixed fees is that you can better predict your budget for an adoption even if it proves to be unsuccessful. The disadvantage is that you will pay higher costs if you experience a quick, easy adoption then you would have had the adoption professional charged an hourly fee for services. Click Adoption Costs to learn more about financial resources for adoption.

References

Adoption agencies should also be able to provide you with a list of references -- not only from families that have adopted through the agency, but also from other other adoption professionals as well as birth parents. Families should take the time to fully research any adoption professional before choosing them to handle their adoption. Families should also remember that just becuase a friend or neighbor used a specific agency, that doesn't necessarily mean that that agency will be a good fit for their family. The decision to adopt a child is an important one -- and families should ensure that the adoption professional they choose to handle their adoption process meets all of their needs.