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Adoption
anangelbug
member
Typical application fees & standard proceedures?
anangelbug
member
in Adoption
Wondering what type of inital application fees your agencies/attorney's have/had and their standard process for showing your profiles?
I have heard conflicting info about a local agency. I heard that for caucasion adoption, it's a very long wait and generally only the top 3 couples on the list the longest are shown to a birth mother so should we go with them, our profile might not even be shown for the 1st time for over a year but then I heard from someone else that they ask tons and tons of crazy questions in your paperwork and then they put it in the computer and match your to what birthmothers want so needless to say I'm confused. I am checking with the agency asking them to clarify but wanted to hear your thoughts, opinions and experiences.
Also, did anyone of hire and work with an adoption consultant? I am considering that as well but it's an extra $2,500 but some have said well worth the extra expense.
TIA!
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Re: Typical application fees & standard proceedures?
I'm a birthmother, so I can't tell you the fees or anything.
But when I was looking for a family, the agency sent me dozens of profiles.Each profile was basically a packet of pages and photos that the families themselves put together. With intros, information about them as a couple, family photos, and references from everyone from friends to family to pastors and church elders.
It wasn't just the top 3 families, and it had nothing to do with the length of time a family was waiting. The family I chose had spoken to a few other girls (just weren't good fits), and they had been with the agency less than 6 months. I went with an adoption coordinator (littleangeladoptions.com) it's not a typical agency...its more like a legal liason between the family and the birthparents.
Good luck, adoption is a beautiful thing!
Our initial application fee was $150.
Define "crazy questions". We had to fill out a profile key, where we told them what situations we were open to. This ranged to everything from race/ethnic background, medical conditions, prematurity, openness to twins or sibling groups, number of visits a year with the birthfamily, drug/alcohol use by the birthparents, and amount of medical/living expenses we were willing to pay. The information on the profile key was compared to the situations they had, and our profiles were shown accordingly. There were a few things on our key where we stated "call with situation", where we wanted to consider things on a case by case basis.
In terms of our profile, different birthmoms had different things they were looking for, like a PAP who wanted to be a SAHM, whether or not there were other kids already in the PAP's family, etc. That information was also used to determine which profiles were shown.
We did not work with an adoption consultant.
"crazy" as in were you popular in grade school, what kind of sports did you and DH play in school etc... that kind of crazy
We are working with an adoption agent out of GA. It's an extra fee ($2800), but well worth the money, IMO. We signed up 3 weeks ago, and they have already presented us with two BM situations.
As far as agencies, every agency does things differently. The application fees I have seen is between $500 -$1200. As far as "crazy" questions, our agent told me some agencies are more selective than others. Overall, I think it just depends on what you want.
If we don't find a situation directly through our agent, we plan to apply with two adoption agencies. One semi-local in Florida and one out of Colorado. The extra application fees will drive the costs up, but we have more opportunities this way.
We went with the same facilitator in GA as Willis. When we applied 4 years ago it was $1200. The facilitator had an agreement with some of the agencies to waive the fees for the facilitator's clients but the typical fee we saw back then was $500.00.
We would be called if we fit the criteria a BM wanted to see if we wanted to be presented to the mother.
Those sound like that agency's types of autobiography questions, and aren't necessarily crazy. We had to answer questions about what our favorite subjects were in school, did we enjoy our teen years, were we rebellious high schoolers, etc.
Ditto everything said by *Willis* (except already being shown to two birth moms, because we're still working on our home study). We're using a different consultant, but one that is also very good.
The big advantage of working with an adoption consultant (assuming you work with someone very good) is a shorter wait time. The average length of time until placement with my consultant is 5 - 6 months, and even shorter for couples willing to take a child that is full or part African American. We're paying $2,500 for ours, and I figure that's just a drop in the bucket compared to the overall cost of adoption, so I might as well use someone who can help us have a positive adoption experience.
I have heard stories about agencies that only show the profiles of the parents who have waited the longest. This is not the case with any agencies we considered, and I think it's also pretty rare. While I hate wording it like this, agencies are really in the "business" of finding families for children. If they don't provide a birth mother with a good selection of families and they make families wait to be shown until people ahead of them on the list are picked, I think both birth moms and adoptive parents will quit going to that agency. Most agencies try to match up what the birth mother and adoptive parents are looking for, and then present the birth mother with 3 - 12 profiles (it seems to vary a lot by agency, and probably also the number of families the agency works with).