Newbie, meeting with SW at agency later this week...

tfkre8ive

Hi all,

I'm a new poster, long-time lurker. We went to a DIA orientation meeting a few months ago and we were disappointed that they only spoke about adoption from the birth parents perspectives. We were hoping to get perspectives from adult adoptees and adoptive parents as well. So we're going to meet one-on-one with a social worker from the agency to help address some of this.

What questions would you recommend we ask? Here's our list so far:

• How many DIA do you complete each year?
• How many waiting families do you have?
• Will we be shown to BPs in our state only, or nationwide?
• We are at the semi-open comfort level, what percentage of DIA are semi-open vs open vs confidential?
• We are open to infants of any race, but we are less open to in utero drug exposure (marijuana ok, but not much else), what are our chances of being matched given our requirements?
• (This one is an uneducated debate between DH and me) If we were matched with a mom and later found out that she was having twins (we would be thrilled with twins) would we be charged double placement fees?
• Please explain to us what pass through fees are? Does every DIA have these or do certain situations have these more often? If so, what are those situations?
• Can we see the application forms prior to paying the application fee?
  

I hate that some of these are about money--it feels like adoption is a commodity when we talk so much about money, but we are not wealthy and money is a big concern for us in this process.

What other questions should we be asking?

bumpuser794640

I think you have a good list, but be prepared that a lot of the answers will be "it depends" - at least in terms of how many placements they do, your chances of getting placed, etc.  Any good agency will be able to explain these things to you, but with the caveat that placements depend on soooo many different factors that they cannot give you an accurate percentage chance of you getting matched, etc.

Dr.Loretta

Can we have references? Not only for successful matches, but for unsuccessful ones?

What happens if a match falls through?

If for some reason we identify an e-mom, can we use you for placement and finalization? Do the fees change in that situation?

IME with twins you only pay double the finalization fee, since you're finalizing the adoption paperwork for 2 children, but the rest is a two-fer. But good question to ask to know in advance.

When was your last licensing inspection?

What kind of counseling is provided to all members of the triad?

I will agree with Gnome that some of these answers will be "it depends". For example, for every couple that waits a while for a child with no drug exposure, there's one matched quickly with an e-mom who hasn't taken any.

And it's OK that it's about money. Adoption can be expensive, due to fees for everything from conducting a proper homestudy, to lawyer fees for finalization, to matching fees that cover things like SW salaries, advertising, and counseling. We waffled for months between a smaller agency with lower fees and a larger agency with much higher fees. Most of us have been there in one way or another.

tfkre8ive

Thank you both for your responses. These are things we hadn't thought about, especially references both successful and not.

And thanks for the reassurance about feeling weird about focusing on money. It's a large expense for us and it's weird to fixate on the cost associated with growing our family. I don't really know how to put it in words--that feeling.