[Ktates]

and another amen here! I agree with Kretz that there does not seem to be agencies that necessarily have healthier referrals than others - sometimes that agency does not know what type of health issues a child may have when they get the referral - that's why you want to line up a good IA doctor.

I would make sure you get recent (last year or so) referrences for any agency you are using - also be specific as to region - an agency can have great contacts in one region and terrible ones in another. Or another region can be less friendly to foreign adoption so a parent's experience could be different even though they are with the same agency. You may want to ask how long they have worked with that particlar team in region - but just because it's a new region doesn't necessarily mean that's a bad thing either.

Ultimately our decision came down to a gut feeling and our ability to chose what region we could go to. We had a great experience but we did a lot of research prior to chosing an agency - it's definitely time well spent!