September 22, 2006

Adoptive Families and Average Wait Times

Megan, I've noticed that a lot of new couples have been added to the website in the past two weeks. How does American Adoptions control the number of active adoptive families in order to ensure the average waiting time for (already waiting) families? This part of the process confuses me. Thanks!

This is a great question that is of course of high importance to our families. To be honest, American Adoptions has never had to close our list to prospective adoptive parents because we have always been able to keep up with the average wait times. In the history of American Adoptions, we have completed more than 3,000 adoptions and are currently completing 300 per year. Based on our years of experience, we have noticed trends and times of the year where there are slight increases in new families activating and showing up on the website. While this may be a concern for families there are also times of the year when we see increases of birth mothers as well. The end result is that there are also times where more families are receiving placements and being moved to the "Completed Adoptions" section of the website.

One positive we have found during times when more families activate is that this provides direct funding into our advertising campaign and allows us to find more potential birth parents. This formula that has always worked for us through the years. There is going to be fluctuation of numbers each month because every month we complete a different number of adoptions. Also, every month we activate a different number of families as well. There are months where activations slow down and months where we see more activations occur. These patterns are especially noticeable around holidays, tax season and summer months. It is common to see an increase and decrease during certain times of the year. You may be seeing more new families showing up, but the overall number of activated families does not ever raise above a certain number because it always ends up balancing out with placements. Typically we are working with 125 to 150 unmatched families at any given time as well as at least 100 birth mothers at any given time. We try and keep the ratio of birth mothers to adoptive families as close to a one to one ratio as possible to maintain accurate wait times. On top of this, we are contacted by new potential birth parents every single day so the amount of leads always exceeds the number of unmatched families.

Another thing that cannot be determined by simply viewing family profiles on the website is the number of families currently matched with birth mothers. At any given time there can be 35-50 families matched and waiting for their birth mother to deliver, so in fact there are not as many families being actively shown to incoming potential birth mothers. Another factor that has to be taken into consideration is that every family has different APQ preferences that have a huge effect on the turnaround of families joining. For example, some families will join the Agency Assisted Program while others join a Traditional Program so these families are not being shown to any of the same potential birth parents. The best piece of advice I can give to every active family is to focus your energy on the pieces that you can control-your APQ and profile. Your Adoption Specialist monitors your Profile exposure numbers to make sure you are getting average to above average exposure at all times. If these things are done, the rest will fall into place as it is supposed to. I know that this rationale is not easy at times and that every family will experience times of frustration, increased anxiety, bewilderment about when a match will happen etc, However, I also know from years of experience and from the joy of witnessing hundreds of adoptions that adoption is a very special miracle that always ends up happening as it is supposed to.