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Hello All-First time post. My wife and I live in Virginia and have started meeting with local agencies, but still we are left with a lot of questions. I don't exactly feel like I am getting straight answers from anyone, and hope that your collective experiences might help us navigate this process. Thanks so much!Here is where we are at: We are a white couple hoping to adopt domestically, some some form of open adoption, and would prefer a healthy Caucasian baby - up to 1 year. We don't want to work with an agency that excludes LGBT parents (I suppose I should say that we are a man and a woman!). We have a decent income. I'm 40yrs old, my wife is 46. We've started our biographies, birth mom letter, and have been collecting family photos. The ball is rolling...slowly.There is not much unusual about our case. So, any thoughts on the best way to make this happen? After doing our initial research, we are left more than a little perplexed. It seems like we should go with a local agency and then advertise on our own through adoption websites for the $100/mo service fee? Do these or the "Pennysaver" ads actually work? When people speak of "networking" what, exactly, do they mean? What do you think about meeting with a local adoption attorney for $400 - just for an initial conversation? And finally, any thoughts on specific agencies/services in Virginia (PM me)? What should we be looking for in the agencies we are meeting with (we've heard agencies give conflicting reports on each other)?Thanks, everyone. We really appreciate the help. And good luck with your own journey.
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Congrats on starting our do potion journey! Just saw your post. Here is what we did.Of course, glad to help in any way I can!Congrats on starting the journey of adoption! It is a very exciting, yet stressful at times, time of our lives!In short I will tell you what we did.We did our homestudy independly. The reason was, we we ready to get going, but hadn't decided on an agency. Also, we figured this way would be much quicker! Not sure if you are homestudy ready? I can give you that info too, if you need it. We had gone to some info sessions and realized that we didn't like either agency, but we know now what we were looking for. We registered with Adoption Access located in Dallas. I think we paid $2650. They were extremely nice. We had a lot of opportunity right away. The timing was too soon for us. Very sad for us! Then it slowed down... We also altered our criteria and the agency told us that the wait could be up to 3yrs. That's when I knew we needed to start looking elsewhere!I googled adoption situations and came across a few websites. One I would recommend is Bundle of Joy. Martine Powell is super nice. You pay $100 and she emails you when a situation comes up. There were other networking sites too, you wil have to research you own reviews. [url=http://www.abcadoptions.com/prosituations.htm]Professional Adoption Situations[/url]I didn't stop there. I e-mailed ob-gyn offices in Texas. No luck there. I also e-mailed adoption attorneys in Florida. Florida is the most friendly adoptive parent state. Had a few situations arise and even a couple after we were matched. We got our match through our consultant. Tracie Loux is one of the most amazing people I have ever come across. She and her husband have a bunch of children. Some bio, some foreign adoption, one with down syndrome and a special needs infant. She works around the clock and her phone always on! If you have any questions, she will answer it! We paid $1950. She didn't have to help us with our homestudy or our profile. She network us with agencies and attorneys. She also has a private Facebook page for support. The families are amazing! Anyway, if we had it over, I would not have registered with Adoption Access, but just with Tracie.Her website is:[url=http://thespiritofadoption.wordpress.com/]The Spirit of Adoption | Tracie Loux- Adoption Consultant[/url]Her cell is 816-5504707Her e-mail is tracie@christianadoptionconsultants.comOkay, I think that is it :-)Our baby boy is 10 months old!. He is beautiful! We love him so much!All the best to you and keep in touch!Xoxo
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Welcome. First of, some states do not allow advertising of websites and penny savers unless an agency is advertising so you may want to look into your state laws if not already done so. Some agencies have a cut off age of 45 - at least our agency did so make sure you ask that first when interviewing other agencies so you don't waste your time. As far as agency questions, a big question for us and why we went with ours is whether any fees are refundable should the matchbox be disrupted. I also ask about emom expenses - ours only allowed certain items making the fees lower than some we interviewed. Depending on what your budget is, you also may want to see if a referral agency or facilitator is allowed by your state. It might help with your agency hunt. You may also wish to look out of state as your wait time and criteria for an agenxy might be pitsideOf Va. you need to chose anin state agency for your home stidy but dont have to for your placing agency. For networking, I typically take that to mean letting anyone and everyone you know that you are willing to adopt to help get the word out in case there is an opportunity for a private adoption (omitting agency involvement but you still MUST hire an attorney to file and do documents, termination of parental rights etc. just be careful again as some states have very specific laws on how you can let people know! Depending on what you are going to be speaking with the attorney about would tell me if it was acceptable. Most I thought gave a general overview and anything over a certain amount of time would be charged. With that said, our agency gave us a list to chose from and each one didn't charge is anything but then again they knew they might see us again as we had a match. It can be overwhelming for sure but at some point we all trudged through the vast field of agency, attorneys, etc. another piece of advice I would give is make sure when using an attorney, to make sure they are AAAA accredited. It makes a world of difference to have one adoptions accredited credentials!