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Adoption
Frustrated with profile book
Can some of you share with me the guidelines or recommendations that your agency gave you for your profile book?
I'm having some trouble communicating with my agency about ours and it has me really frustrated. The only guidelines that we were given was one sheet with 12 suggestions, the instructions to be creative and to follow the suggestions as closely as we would like. Well, I did that and thought I had put together a pretty nice book. I sent it to the agency for review before printing it (we have to do it online) and they hated it. Said that I didn't grasp the meaning of the book & that it needed to show what we had to offer as parents. We met with the agency to try and understand what they are looking for, but I'm still not sure that I get it. I'm trying to add more captions to our pictures, but finding it really difficult to do using Shutterfly. The SW tried to make me feel better by telling me that most people have to re-do their books 7 or 8 times. Really??? Anyone else experience this? I put a lot of time into that first book...I can't imagine having to do it another 6 or 7 times!
This all has me so frustrated!
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Re: Frustrated with profile book
we 're doing IA, so we don't need to do a profile book... but I started on one when we were considering DA.
Basically... i did it on shutterfly and it was laid out like this
Cover- Pic of the two of us with our names and something like "Adoption profile"
Page one- another pic of us, with a "Dear Birthmom" letter- thanking them for looking at our profile and considering us as parents, mentioning that we know that they only want to make the best decision for their baby
Page Two- Dh's page. A big pic of Dh by himself, with some paragraphs about him. ( where he grew up, family, siblings, his interests, his job, things he looks forward to doing with a child)
Page three- My page- a big pic of me by myself, with some writing about me and my family, my upbringing, my hobbies, my job, whether i plan to keep working after the baby etc)
Page 4 OUR page- another pic of Dh and i with some writing about how we met, how long we've been together, things we like to do together, things we think will make us good parents, more info about how we plan to raise the kid ( if you plan to be involved in a church or synagoge, will the kid go to public or private school? will you encourage the kid to go to college?)
PAge 5- our house- some pics of our house and some text about the house, the neighborhood, why we like living here
Page 6 family and friends- a little more description of our family and friends, and some pics of us with our family and friends
Thats about as far as i got... but i think i was only gonna do one more page, with just a final note to thank the birth mom for looking at our book and with the agency contact info. I never sent it into an agency,so i have no idea if its "good" or not, but hopefull it might help ya! good luck!!
That is unfortunate that they aren't good at communicating what they think you should have. FWIW, our SW showed us a ton of profiles from people who had been matched, pointing out the good, the bad, and the ugly. We did have to modify a few pictures for our profile, and did a little bit of back and forth, but we didn't have to re-do several times.
Note that our profile only needed to be 2 pages, so you might be able to expand with yours, but here are some of our guidelines:
Describe some of the things that might matter to you if you were the birthparent. These may include how long you've been married, your relationship with your spouse, your children or other family members, hobbies/interests, work, plans for returning to work (or not) after the baby arrives, extended families, religious practices (if they are important to you), and anything else you think might make you ideal candidates for parenthood.
While facts are important, so are emotions. Talk about what it means to be a family. Consider including feelings about openness or continued contact with birthparents.
As for pictures:
Select pictures that show why your family is special.
Don't use photos taken from far away, or are dark or blurry. Include other children if you have them, and extended family, including the soon-to-be grandparents. You can even include pictures of your pets. More recent photos are preferable, reflecting you and your family today.
A few things that weren't on the guidelines but were communicated by our SW:
Show fun pictures, but they have to have a certain level of generic-ness. We had to get rid of a great picture of us at dinner because there was alcohol on the table and that might raise a red flag to some birthparents. I had a couple of wacky Halloween pictures and my SW had to find a nice way to say I looked scary.
DH wears sunglasses from the moment he leaves the house, and we were encouraged to not have sunglasses on in any of our pictures, so our faces could be seen. And no swimsuit pictures. I think that goes back to my generic statement somewhat.
I hope this helps. I was a little concerned about "doing it right", but I had fun sorting through pictures and putting it together.
We didn't do a formal "dear birthmother letter", but we did an opening section where we spoke directly to the birthmother/birthparents thanking them for making this decision and telling them how we felt about adopting.
If you want to see our pages, PM me and I can send you the links.
GL!
Thanks for the input miss & Dr. Most of what you both said is similar to what I did for ours. The main difference is that our agency suggested more pictures and less writing because our homestudy will be available for reading. I did a lot of our book based on what I would like to know/see if I was on the other side...of course I'm not on the other side, so my view could be wrong...
Mine is currently layed out like this:
Page 1: Picture of us, our names and a statement welcoming the birthparents to a sneak peek of us
Page 2: Picture of us and letter welcoming the birthparents to our book, mentioning that we loved to meet with them and answer any questions they have, information about us (our families, education, employment & how we met), why we are interested in adoption, thanking them for viewing our book and expressing our desire to be honest with a child about adoption.
Page 3: Another picture of us and continuation of the letter.
Page 4-5: Pictures of our house including before & after shots of a flower box we built last summer b/c working around the house is one of our hobbies
Page 6-7: DH's family including group pics, DH feeding his cousin's 6 month old, DH with a grown cousin, me with many of his cousins, and DH with his dad, brother, uncle and grandpa at our wedding. Here I mention how we have a total of 4 "sides" of the family and are always attending family get togethers
Page 8-9: My family including separate pics with me & mom, grandpa, all my cousins and one cousin. Also me/DH with my grandma, DH playing Wii with my uncle & DH/me with some of my family making pierogi for Christmas.
Page 10-11: Spending time with our God-daughter. Include a pic of me/her, DH/her, both of us with her & one of DH feeding her when she was a baby. Included captions about our traditions with her, including easter egg coloring & pumpkin carving. Also included a small paragraph about how although she isn't related to us, she still calls us auntie & uncle b/c we have been good friends with her mom for many years and we all know that love and support is what truly makes a family.
Page 12-13: Our dog & a little blurb about how she's good with kids
Page 14-15: Pics of our travels and a statement about how we love to see the beauty this country has to offer.
Page 16-17: Some pics of us having fun with the heading big kids at heart and silly captions for the pics
Page 18-19: Random pics of us & us with family/friends including captions
Page 20: More random pics
Our SW did show us a couple other profiles when we met with her, but all were of waiting couples, not ones that have already been matched. Also, all the profiles she showed us had things that she told us she didn't like about ours...like 2 pages of our dog.
Thanks again for sharing what your agencies recommended! I know I'm probably rambling and I'm not really sure what kind of help I'm really looking for, I'm just so upset with all of this.
Why does your agency recommend against a photo book? I kind of surprises me to learn that agencies have such varying requirements...I guess I always thought there was a general format that everyone followed.
I thought unique was good as well...but now I feel like our agency wants everyone to follow the same format and include all the same things.
Well ours had a list of questions they wanted to see answered in the profile. ours is like 10 pages 3 long text pages telling our individual stories how we met who we are extra and about our immediate family. the rest have a paragraph or 2 one about our home, pets, openness, religion child care and i am not sure what else. each of our personal a stories are 2 pages long we also added like 3 pages of just pictures. we can not do the photo books ours had to be on paper and in report covers so they could add some papers to it. it also had ot be in a format that they could photocopy if need be. we only did one revision on it then it went to print.
our agency wants text heavy. sorry dont know if that helps
you can look at mine online if you would like the online one only has a few pictures
pm me if you want to see it.
I read your summary of your profile and it sounds similar to ours - and our agency loved our book!
I think PP had the right idea - have the agency show you some books from couples who've adopted succesfully through them to give you a better idea of what they want.
And remember - it's YOUR book, not the agency's. If you love your book and think it is a great representation of you, then use it. The right BM for you will see it and connect with it.
I PM'd you a message with a link to our book from Shutterfly. Maybe this can give you some more ideas on how to do the picture captioning?