How do I make a decision about sharing our profile with a different agency?

We have been asked by our small local agency (the one that did our home study) whether we would be interested in putting our name and information to a local expectant mother who is considering placing her child.

Where we live we have very limited options (read no options) about local ‘full service’ adoption agencies that reflect what we believe are best practices in adoption (practices that reflect ongoing support for expectant and first parents, adoptees and adoptive parents including navigation of open adoption). Further there are basically no big local agencies that stress and educate about open adoption and many of them will only work with christian heterosexual married couples and while we are a heterosexual married couple we don’t want to work with an agency that doesn’t work with families of all kinds. We are planning on signing up with an agency in a nearby state that is focused on open adoption and supports all members of the triad, before and after placement. However, that support is provided by the big agency if the expectant and first parent is in that agency state, otherwise the counseling would be contracted out to a small local agency that provides counseling, in our case our local home study agency would probably provide that counseling. Our local home study agency is a small operation that primarily handles home studies for adoptions and fostering situations and counseling in the situations described above. So far we have been impressed with how they talk about all members of the triad and their approach to adoption. However, the local agency does not have an established large scale structured program for expectant and first parents or adoptees. They do not go out and seek expectant parents or market themselves as an agency that matches. Actually, they don’t market themselves at all. They are sometimes approached by expectant parents.

The situation that we’ve been told about is in some ways perfect. The expectant mother is super local which we think would be important in our idea of open adoption relationships and she is really interested in having an ongoing relationship. If she chooses to place her child she has expressed an interest in the family not being religious, but the local ‘full service’ (someone please provide another word – I hate that this sounds like a gas station) are primarily religious organizations and so matches appear to not be what she is looking for. She has described some specific world views that align closely with ours.

We have agreed to the local agency sharing our profile (I worked into the night on it), but we want to make sure that if she is interested in talking with us that all of us are given the education, counseling and support that is needed. We’re trying to identify possible problems with not using the big agency and identify resources we can use to address those issues. We would appreciate any input. This may go absolutely nowhere, but if it does we wanted to have thought this out properly. Thanks.

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