[carlal32]

Hello, I'm a newcomer and needing a lot of advice! The more I search the internet and write letters to various agencies, the more confused and overwhelmed I get. I need some feedback from you adoptive veterans!

First, is it better to go with a local agency or with a national one? Which is faster? I'm afraid if we go through a local agency, they won't look for birthmothers in other states or regions, and then the wait time could be very long. And we don't know which agencies are reliable and not.

We are from Colorado. Do any of you have good suggestions for reliable local or national agencies that might not be too expensive and have long wait times?????????

What is the a reasonable cost for an adoption where you have to wait 9-15 months? And is it better to go with an agency that does everything or an agency where you have to find the finalizing attorney yourself, etc? Of course, that might make a difference on whether that agency is licensed in the state you reside or not. Even in cases of national agencies it appears they don't always have local affiliates.

Any and all advice welcome!

[LisaCA]

hi,

go to the orientation talks that the local agencies give. ask them their wait times. Ask if they advertise locally and/or nationally. That will give you better information. also ask for references.

we used a local agency for our homestudy and postplacement visits, but used a facilitator to find our child. that made things move quickly.

all totalled our adoption for dd will be around 20,000, but that's expensive. we hired a facilitator (4200 dollars) and an expensive lawyer to assist hammering out a legally binding adoption agreement ($4000). Plus we traveled and spent a week in illinois to pick up dd and wait for ICPC ($2500-3000 for hotel, food, car, gas and other expenses) so you can see the costs can add up depending on location, etc. So it's hard to estimate. depends on so many variables...

btw, we're thinking of moving to colorado (denver metro area, probably Aurora). where do you live?

lisa

[rbporlando]

We're in the agency/attorney search phase too and having a really hard time figuring which is the best way to go... We haven't had much luck finding good agencies in our area - so it looks as though we would have to go out of the area completely... any thoughts? Any thoughts on using an attorney instead? What are the virtues of a facilitator?

Thanks for your help!

Rebecca