Just starting out...need some advice

eagleswing216, Thank you so much for your thoughts. I will be keeping them in mind while moving forward.

We know someone that went through an adoption lawyer and for them it took them 4 months once they had all their paperwork. I think it all depends on how open minded you are and how much work you put into advertising yourselves.

We are very new to the adoption journey also. Can anyone suggest any good adoption agencies they have dealt with? Maybe around the Charlotte, NC area? Thanks for any help!

We have just experienced our third failed match (ie. we have been matched with three different birthparents but in each case, they decided to parent after the baby was born). This is very unusual, and many families never have a failed match, but here is a long list of questions we are now asking (beyond the "standard" questions): Questions to Ask an Adoption Agency (beyond the traditional questions due diligence questions) 1) How many successful placements did you have last year and the year before? How many matches did not result in a successful placement? (i.e. what is your successful placement rate?) 2) What is your agencys mission? 3) Do your social workers keep files documenting all their communication with birthparents and adoptive parents? 4) Does one social worker work with both the birthparents and adoptive family or do you separate those functions? What do you see as the pros and cons of those two approaches? 5) Are your social workers employed full-time with your agency, or are they contract workers? 6) How do your social workers track which families are open to which situations (social & medical history, race), and therefore appropriate to have their profile shared with a particular birthparent? Do all your social workers know the waiting families? For instance, when a family completes their home study and is ready to be circulated/activated, is their profile presented/discussed at a staff meeting by the social worker who did their home study? 7) How does communication happen within the agency among the staff? 8) What is the average caseload of social workers at your agency? 9) How are your social workers supervised and the quality of their work assessed? 10) How do you balance the needs of adoptive families and of birthparents? Who is your client? 11) What practices do you have in place to reduce the economic risk of prospective adoptive parents (e.g. managing birthparent living expenses)? 12) What services do you provide for prospective adoptive families? What can families who are matched expect from your agency after the match and before the baby is born? How often can they expect to hear from you? 13) If we are uncomfortable with how a situation is progressing (e.g. weҒre not comfortable the social worker is asking the tough questions, the birthparent is becoming very unpredictable), what can we do? 14) Please provide a reference from a family who had one or more failed matches and went on to have a successfully placement. Understanding that each case is unique and that there isnt a one-size fits all approach: 15) Describe the counseling and assessment work you do with birthparents? Once they have decided that the best parenting choice for them is to make an adoption plan, how specifically do you prepare them so that they can follow through with that plan? 16) When a birthparent comes to your agency several weeks or months before her due date, what contact do you have with her between then and her delivery date? For instance, do you have a policy about how often a social work needs to contact a birthparent? What type of counseling/further exploration happens after the initial intake during that ongoing contact? 17) How is your counseling/preparation different with birthparents who are parenting other children vs. those who are giving birth for the first time vs. those who have placed another child for adoption? 18) If a birthparent says sheҒs sure about her plan, isnt going to change her mind, etc. how much are issues explored? 19) How do address issues with the extended birth family? For instance if you are working with a teenage birthmother, what contact do you have with her parents? If there is a birthfather in the picture, what services do you provide him? 20) At what point do you share profiles of prospective adoption families with birthparents? (e.g. after an initial assessment, after several meetings with them, not until they reach a certain point of their pregnancy, etc.) 21) What information can adoptive families ask about birthparents? For instance, if weҒre concerned about how the birthparent is going to explain her adoption plan to her other children, can we ask the social worker to explore that with her and report back to us? 22) Describe what happens during the 72 hours after delivery? What contact do you have with the birthparents? Is it over the phone or do you meet with them in person? If they start to express uncertainty, what do you do? Is it appropriate to remind them of the reasons they decided to make an adoption plan or do you start all over with decision-making? 23) What contact do you have with adoptive parents during the 72 hours? What is the goal of that contact? 24) What is your practice after a failed match, both with birthparents who are now unexpectedly parenting and with adoptive families who have experienced a significant loss?