How often does your agency / attorney check in with you?

Bpmg

Hi all, 

We completed our homestudy at the end of December, and have been "live" with our small attorney since November. We debated for a long time between using a smaller agency / attorney and a big agency like American Adoptions. Ultimately we decided to go with the smaller attorney based on a personal reference as well as speaking with some families that had succesful placements through them.

Now that we are a few months in I am finding it really hard to not know what is going on in the process. They do not check in with us really at all, I usually send an email once a month or so. My understanding is that our profile has been shown a few times, but no successful matches.  Its hard to not know whats going on on a more regular basis, I have this nightmare vision that our books are just sitting there maybe not even being shown. Or maybe there arent alot of birth moms, I just don't really know!

I am wondering how much information people get from their agency or attorney - should I be checking in more, should they be checking in with me? Do other people have more visibility into the number of birth moms / profiles being shown etc?

Appreciate any insight, we are trying to decide if maybe this situaiton isnt for us and we need to look for another agency. I am just not sure we would have a different experience elsewhere. 

Thanks in advance for sharing!  

 

 

 

summergirl79

We used both a small local agency and large national agency- we had to initiate check ins with both- the national one was very responsive, took longer for the small one but understood given staffing.  

julandjo

We are with a state-specific agency.  We initiate the check-ins roughly every 6 months.  Otherwise we are not contacted.  BUT they do have monthly support group meetings for waiting families.  One meeting a year goes over that year's number of placements, etc.  But all the other meetings focus on one topic at a time (i.e. PAD, choosing a daycare, dr., etc.).

Bpmg

Thank you! I guess I am being high maintenance

sewolff

You're not being high maintenance.  You should feel free to check in as often as you want.  Adoption is a long, exhausting process and I find it helps to be proactive. Also, if you have an attorney, he's working for you.

Dr.Loretta

you're not being high maintenance, just figuring out what everyone's expectations should be.

I told my SW we'd check in every 4-6 weeks. She was fine with it, but you could tell she thought that would probably be too often. The first time, she had stats on how often we'd been shown over the last month. We had contact over the next couple of months over various things until we got The Call.

I'd contact your attorney and set expectations on both sides on how much contact is considered normal, and what will work for you in particular.

GL

MagickalNarwhal

I don't think you're being high maintenance either!

Our agency did it a little differently - once an expectant mom was ready to choose a family, if the basics matched up with what we were open to (risks, exposures, race etc), our social worker would send out a short profile on the eparents, and we would then indicate if we wanted our book shown to them/her. We would then get the info when we were either chosen or not chosen, usually a few days later. Profiles came out on an average every 2 - 3 weeks. We had one spell with no activity for like 5 or 6 weeks, and I think our SW checked in with us after about a month?

It's totally a reasonable question to ask them though...I know different agencies have different ways of approaching it.

[Deleted User]

The user and all related content has been deleted.