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We are just starting our adoption journey and found this forum. It looks like there is a ton of information here. We are looking to adopt a little girl 3 or younger. We looked into international and found out that we do not meet the requirements for most of the countries and now are turning to domestic. We are looking for an agency, facilitator, or consultant to guide us in this journey. Any referrals (or warnings) would be greatly appreciated. My husband is 1/2 Mexican, so we are open to bi-racial or Latino heritage as well. I understand that you can not post agency referrals here, but please feel free to PM me with any info.
One additional question, we do not have a home study yet. Should we go ahead and start this or wait until we have found an agency? I know for international there are additional requirements for Hague countries, but if going domestic, does it matter who does the home study? I have seen several agencies that charge more if they did not do the home study, so we were kind of putting this off until we chose an agency, but others don't even do home studies and want this before they will work with you. Any advice would be greatly appreciated!
Jami
Find your agency first. Many have specific people they use to write the home study and if you had one done before hand, it would could potentially not be what your agency wants, and you would have wasted all that money. There are very few agencies that will want you to have an existing HS because there is also a time factor. If a HS is too old, it has to be redone. If you did a HS now and then weren't able to take classes and get all of the other stuff done within their time frame, the HS would have to be done again.
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Also, in some states you the placing agency (if in state) has to do the homestudy, so if you did your homestudy and then wanted to use a different agency, you might have to redo it for that reason as well. You won't be able to be "active" with an agency without a homestudy, and you probably won't be able to apply/ be accepted to an agency that is not able to do your homestudy (ie. out of state), since the homestudy is part of what they will look at in committing to work with you, but you can at least be in communication with them and know that they are a good fit.
We have already selected and paid or agency and had to get an independent home study. Now that we are this far into the process, I do wish we had done things differently.
Do your research for your State laws first. I would contact an adoption lawyer in your state and find out what the laws are. In some states, you do not need an agency. That can make the cost much lower.
In our state, you can simply get a home study by any licensed professional. Many of our adoption lawyers here are contacted directly by birth mothers. We have had 7 contacts like this in the past 5 weeks and wish we had saved our money instead of paying the agency.
I think that the main reason people prefer agencies (other than if they are required by your state) is the hopes that the advertising will get you a match more quickly and that the birthmother will have more counseling. For us, the independent lawyers are providing so many more contacts than we thought they would.
this is my first post here so I apologize if this is in the wrong area. How do you find a lawyer? Google for one and hope they are good? (we recently went through IVF with failure to only find out in the end the dr didn't think it would work from the get go. With that said we thought she was the best, I think best car salesman)
Google American Academy of Adoption Attorneys (AAAA) these are accredited attorneys that deal with adoption. There are directories for each state to help search. Our agency will only work with those in this affiliation. Good luck!
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