To add to the 'types of' adoption kinds I thought I'd do one on the agencies related to adoption.
Over 6 years ago, when I was making an adoption plan for Parker, whom I at the time thought by the name of Tobias (just FYI) Jacob and I did visit about a handful of agencies.
And now, 6 years later, I have learned tons about adoption agencies through things like this really cool forum on go on for birth moms called
Birthmom buds and also through various blogs and such.
The truth is that a good adoption agency is rare and usually, they are really just for-profit businesses that act like charities and public service, they are not, they are mostly private.
I do not know that much about all adoption agencies and this list is just going to be mostly my opinion on what exists out there. As with all my lists, the things I list can be combined or added to, and I like to keep things simple by not repeating ideas. Also, I'll probably not be able to mention all that really exists, because I don't know that much, I already said that, oops.
Here ya go
My favorite kind of agency. The kind that is usually started by a bunch of people who want to really make a good difference in peoples lives and live by the 'golden rule' and such.
These agencies are often really nice, but sometimes they just disappear or get bought up by something bigger than them and lose all their good intentions when they start getting successful.
Often they are staffed by people who are themselves a part of adoption, adoptive parents who want some way to help others become adoption parents, adopted persons who want to 'give back' to adoption. Rarely is there ever any birth parents involved though.
This adoption agency is often the kind that doesn't have very many fees, hosts fund-raising BBQ's and has pictures of the adoptive families they have created in collages framed on the walls. As well, their offices are often like quaint little converted places that probably were abandoned years ago prior to them taking ownership. At least
ABC (the agency I used to find Parker adoptive parents) did. They also provide useful referrals to unbiased counseling for birth parents and if they do not sell-out, their adoption rates, per expectant parent, are low.
They have entire seminars on open adoption and promote it to every pre-adoptive parent.
An agency that is really full of themselves and thinks that they can relate to the expectant parents making adoption plans as well as the adoptive parents, when they are not.
They usually have expensive furniture and many framed important documents on the walls together with weird adverts with sad looking young dark-haired girls holding their babies with some kind of caption about adoption being a good choice. Also just some random weird art around of animals or those crazy weird pictures of babies with flowers or dressed as flowers and stuff like that, I'm not a fan (sorry if you are). They are the ones that take themselves really really way to seriously and could probably talk a scared young girl into placing her unborn child because they act so superior and stuff. They are the type of agency that puts up the price of home studies for each year that a pre-adoptive couple is not matched or just charges the most insane rates for their services. Not to birth parents of course, but as a birth mom, I don't like thinking that people can be forced to pay more than they should just because an agency decides to get 'better lawyers' or something when really their just buying more paint for the walls or padding their own coffers. They boast about getting every expectant parent who enters to plan their baby in adoption and give nominal support for open adoption.
3)On-line only
This is the kind of agency I would never trust be apparently not everyone can make it to an appointment or maybe this agency doesn't even have a real office or something. This is the kind of agency that seems to be the choice of many young expectant moms who want to feel they can read tons of profiles without being questioned or coerced or something. I guess that might be true, but the profiles that seem so good can all be a lie and then where are you once you make a commitment to the process. And I mean this for all parties involved. I know it seems like more control, but at what cost??
Quite a few people, from all parts of adoption, decide that using a lawyer that they find themselves is the best way to go. Often this is because they by chance came across a way to adopt, or place a child in adoption, without the help of an agency. So of course, to make it legal, a lawyer is needed to make it happen. This can work if all the people involved are completely honest and have good intentions toward each other, but it can also go horribly wrong and participates will have no recourse at all, except to pay the lawyers more to do something or whatever. Usually good for people with criminal records because lawyers can be told to ignore those kinds of things if paid enough.
That's all I can think of for now. I might think of others later, but this is all I will do for now.
These are the other 'types in adoption' posts I've done, and before you ask, yes I have written one about adopted persons, but I'm currently not brave enough to post it. Maybe tomorrow, K?
birthmoms adoptive parents birthdads
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