Americans Adopting Orphans
It is the mission of Americans Adopting Orphans:
To advocate for, assist, and support American citizens in ethically adopting and providing aid to orphaned and abandoned children in other countries. To encourage and allow parents to have choice and freedom in the adoption of their children. To keep adoption affordable and available to a wide range of people.
We believe that by making adoption a rewarding, empowering, and reliable experience that more children will find homes. Americans Adopting Orphans Placement Agency is a fully licensed, not-for-profit, Hague accredited adoption agency established in 1994. We are located in Seattle, Washington. Copies of our licenses are available on request. We have programs in China (including the China Waiting Child Program), Burundi, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine.
Dave and Cindy Ptasnik are the founders and co-directors of Americans Adopting Orphans. Dave is an adoptee, and together we decided that we wanted to start our family through adoption. In November of 1992 we completed the adoption of our daughter Katie from China. While delighted with the end result, we felt unfulfilled and frustrated by the adoption process. The agency we chose was a large, well respected agency, but we never really felt as though our needs were important to them. When we decided to adopt again, being “do-it-yourselfers”, we chose to attempt a parent-initiated or independent adoption. After months of research and work we applied to directly to China to adopt our son Joseph. We completed our adoption in September of 1994, but still felt unsatisfied about the adoption process. It was great having the freedom of doing it ourselves, but there was no one to help us if we made a mistake or their was any kind of problem. What we wanted was an adoption agency that cared about customer service as well as the rights and needs of the child. That was when Americans Adopting Orphans was born.
Many adoption agencies are established to provide material support and religious training to children in need. We applaud their goals and their direct support of children in the US and around the world. For many of these agencies, the needs and wants of the adoptive parents are secondary to other agency programs and goals. That was how we felt when we adopted Katie.
It is our belief that there is also a need to advocate for the adoptive parents. By dedicating our agency to providing the highest levels of personal service, and by offering parents unusually complete, helpful adoption guides and services, we believe that we open the adoption experience to more people. This means that people who want more control and service than is allowed by most agencies or who don’t have the time to mess around with all of that adoption paperwork will be more likely to adopt. This opens adoption to more parents, so that more children will find homes. By creating a family based agency, we help more kids.
When analyzing adoption, and those things we found frustrating about it, there were several areas where we believed we could not only involve more families in adoption, but also increase the involvement of families in their own adoption process. When we adopted Katie, we wanted to know more about how our adoption was being processed, what was happening to our paperwork, what was going to happen next, what we could do to help, and what was going on in China in terms of politics, the culture, and even the weather. That is why client families of Americans Adopting Orphans are among the most well-informed adoptive parents about their own adoption and adoption processing in general. To our knowledge, our list of Frequently Asked Questions and paperwork instruction manuals are the most complete and informative available. No other agency works so hard to provide so much specific information to the general public and our client families.
While we could select from many different agencies, most of them seemed about the same to us. While we could choose whether we wanted to adopt domestically or internationally, most agencies forced us to choose one or the other. While we could choose a country, we had to pick just one and had no real choices about how our adoption was handled. Because of Americans Adopting Orphans you can choose to receive technologically advanced self help information booklets with digital forms, or to let us do the paperwork drudgery for you. You can submit dossiers to two countries at the same time. If you want to make a special request, like adopting from a special part of China, we will do what we can to make your adoption dreams become a reality. Plus throughout your adoption you will have unlimited consultation and support for all of your adoption needs and questions.
The premium service does not stop when you travel to adopt your child. Some agencies may consider it sufficient to simply hand your family a list of documents to take with you and leave your family in the hands of commercial tour guides. You deserve to premium instruction packs, document assistance and reviews, and the finest adoption specialists working for and with you overseas. We created the adoption agency for you that we wish had been available when we adopted our kids.
We also believe in fairness of adoption fees. Many adoption agencies would use the fees paid to them by your family to pay for things that are not directly related to your family’s adoption needs. Some have sliding scales that require more affluent families to pay higher fees. Families wanting to adopt healthy infants can be placed at a financial disadvantage by agencies that are more focused on placing emotionally at-risk, physically handicapped, and/or older children. Americans Adopting Orphans believes that each family should pay for the services they receive, regardless of the child they wish to adopt or their personal finances.
Other agencies support religious missions or orphanages in other countries. While we too support orphanages, we do not believe that our adoptive families should have to subsidize the causes, or pay for services, that we think are important. Therefore, Americans Adopting Orphans only asks you to pay for your adoption and the services you want for your family. This means that Americans Adopting Orphans provides you with what you want whether it is more service, or lower fees.
We let you decide where your charitable contributions should go. Again, the choice is yours. If you have a desire to make a donation, we can assist you in making sure your tax deductible contribution gets to where you want it to go in any of the countries we serve. At the same time, we never require families to make donations outside of those required by foreign governments or organizations.
It is our belief that Americans Adopting Orphans is the best value adoption agency available in the U.S., with premium services, unparalleled choices and flexibility, and fair fee structures. It is not our goal to be critical of, or take clients away from, other agencies. However, we know that many families have felt excluded from adoption because of unfair fees, unreasonable requirements or inflexible programs. This is about helping kids, not who has the longest client list. We offer an exciting alternative and opportunity for your family to grow.
We’ve been making a difference one baby at a time beginning with the adoption of our own children. We know that adoption is often a costly, rigid, and frustrating process, but it doesn’t have to be. The agency you select will be significant to your overall satisfaction with the adoption process. If it is important to you to have more control over the services you receive, the fees you pay, your involvement in the adoption process, and the causes you support, we can help. Americans Adopting Orphans provides choice and freedom for your adoption.
