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The Agency Selection Phase
Continued from previous post
After collecting information packets, my husband and I weeded through the pile and eliminated agencies we weren’t interested in. We narrowed our choices to three agencies that sounded like a good fit, and began attending orientation sessions at those agencies.
Attend orientations
All agencies worth their salt offer monthly free orientation workshops (some charge a small fee) that anyone can attend, whether or not you are a client. I highly recommend attending one or more orientations, because you’ll get a good feel for the agency, its personnel, its philosophy and how it operates.
Many agencies offer a plethora of ongoing workshops on many adoption-related topics. Consider your attendance at orientation sessions similar to pre-natal obstetrician visits – you’ll learn a ton and become better equipped to become an adoptive parent.
By attending orientations, you’ll also learn what agencies you don’t want to patronize. I attended a workshop at an agency that offered only fully open adoptions. Back in 1992, when open adoption was still a relatively new development, my husband and I didn’t feel comfortable with the degree of openness that agency required. So we crossed it off our list.
A ‘God Thing’
I attribute our choice of agency to God. My husband and I had pinpointed a particular Christian agency in Seattle that sounded like the perfect fit – they had a newborn program; the average wait time for a baby was decent; they offered both semi-open and open adoptions; their fees were reasonable, and they offered a sliding payment scale.
We had just one hesitation: we lived three hours from Seattle and didn’t personally know anyone who had used their services. We prayed that God would confirm whether this agency was “the one.”
One day, we received a phone call from our brother-in-law, a high school teacher in the Seattle area. He told us about one of his students, who was pregnant and considering adoption. Then he raved about the young woman’s counselor, who he’d met and considered top-notch. We asked what agency the counselor was from. It was the very agency we had chosen.
In the next post…Working with your agency
