What is an Adoption Facilitator and what is their role in an adoption?

By definition an adoption facilitator is someone that helps facilitate adoptions and that is neither an adoption attorney nor an agency. As defined by the State of California Family Code commencing with Chapter 1.5, Section 8623: Adoption facilitators may "Advertise for the purpose of soliciting parties to an adoption or locating children for an adoption or acting as an intermediary between the parties to an adoption." Unfortunately, this definition can mean a lot of different things to different people. If you are going to use a facilitator you should understand what their role should be. First and most important you will absolutely need an adoption attorney and/or an agency. A facilitator should never try to supplement or replace either of these adoption professionals. So if facilitators don’t do the legal work what is our primary purpose? Facilitators should primarily focus on helping couples to locate potential birth parents. Years ago birth parents never met or selected adopting couples. Everything was closed and was handled through agencies. Today that has all changed and most adoptions are open, at least prior to birth. What this means is that birth parents will choose the adoptive couple and talk with you and meet you prior to the birth. Birth mothers typically select adoptive families by reviewing "Dear Birth Mother Letters" or profiles that adoptive couples prepare. How do birth mothers find out that you are a couple considering adoption? This is where a facilitator can help. You need to maximize your exposure and get your profile information in the hands of potential birth mothers. A facilitator is not a required component of an adoption, however it may be the most important service to you. All adoptions consist of two phases - one locating an infant to adopt and phase two is the legal, counseling and financial support of the adoption. There is no adoption until you are working with a potential birth mother. Our facilitation service can greatly reduce the time it takes a couple to locate a domestic infant to adopt. We run extensive multi-state advertising geared toward locating potential birth parents. Because of our extensive advertising and limited number of clients, we have one of the shortest waits in the United States for locating domestic infants for adoption. Over the last several years our average wait is 6 months for couples without children and 9 to 12 months for couples with a child.

What is the Attorneys or Agencies role in an adoption?

Attorneys or Agencies are a required component of every adoption. However they are only required for the phase two (legal) portion of an adoption. Attorneys and agencies are not required to help you in your search for birth parents. They may be a good source, however you need to be very careful in understanding their role in the search process. Many agencies and attorneys admit that they have limited or no programs to help locate potential birth mothers. Their role is to provide the second phase of the adoption. This is no problem, as long as you understand what their role is. The problems we see most often are from clients who have assumed that the agency or attorney was going to provide an active search service only to find out, one or more years later, that their firm doesn’t get many birth mothers. We work hand-in-hand with many adoption attorneys and agencies that do not have active search programs. They often use our facilitation services as their primary search vehicle. Others claim to help and a few do a good job, but for most attorneys or agencies, locating potential birth mothers is not their area of expertise. It is very important that you understand the services that they provide and do not pay for services that you are not getting. Also, you don’t want to pay for overlapping services. If an agency or attorney is truly providing an aggressive birth mother search program don’t duplicate their efforts by hiring a facilitator. This is where knowledge is critical. Many of our clients come to us after spending years on an agency or attorney wait list. These folks did not ask the right questions before paying for their services.

Important questions to ask adoption professional’s