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Make sure that the agency you choose charges fees for a successful placement and not a specific match. There are many such agencies out there. While they are more expensive, there is no financial risk. Such agencies provide many services to expectant mothers considering adoption and prospective adoptive parents at their risk, not yours. Often couples lose thousands of dollars and their plans to adopt may be temporarily derailed when expenses have been doled out and expectant mothers choose to parent. Failed matches are very common; our agency told us that 50% of women who make an adoption plan opt to parent. While I do not know if that statistic is accurate, we experienced two failed matches before we adopted our daughter.
I want to reiterate what I have posted many times on this board about fees; in my experience, they depend entirely on the state of the licensed agency that you choose and whether you adopt independently, using only an attorney and doing much of your own legwork, or whether you choose a licensed no risk agency, and are NOT affected by race. We have adopted two African American newborns using no risk agencies, which provide an array of services, and all adoptions are the same fee. Each of our adoptions was approximately $18,000 plus legal fees and travel expenses.
I highly recommend reading the Adoption Option: Complete Handbook. It lists agencies by state, defines the parameters of adoptions that they participate in (whether domestic, international or both), gives their date of licensure and average annual number of adoptions. It gives a fee range, the services that an agency provides, the requirements of prospective adoptive parents, the average time from contact to completion of homestudy and any ongoing or past litigation. I think you can pick it up at any large bookstore. Best of luck. Sometimes getting started is so hard.
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