Are you thinking about International Adoption?  Are you in the beginning stages of your International Adoption?  Are you in the middle stages of your International Adoption?  Do you know anyone that is at any of these points in International Adoption?  If the answer is YES.  I beg you to read further to spare  yourself the heartache that can occur.

I have been on my International Adoption journey since May of 2007.  In the time since then till now I have seen quite a lot.  There are many stories that I have read that have broken my heart and made me very angry.  I have seen at least a dozen prospective adoptive families that I knew of have their dream of adoption ENDED by various reasons.  YOU DO NOT WANT TO HAVE THIS HAPPEN TO YOU.  And do not be mistaken.  IT CAN and relatively easily too.

 THE FACTS: 

Each year a number of people choose to pursue International Adoption.  Of that number of people there is a percentage that ABSOLUTELY WILL NOT END UP ADOPTING.  Not because they don’t want to but because of a variety of reasons that stops their dream.  YOU MUST ASK YOURSELF IF YOU WANT TO BE A PART OF THE PERCENTAGE THAT ENDS UP ADOPTING – OR PART OF THE SMALL BUT REAL PERCENTAGE THAT ENDS UP WITHOUT A CHILD.

WHAT YOU MUST ABSOLUTELY DO TO AVOID BECOMING A PROSPECTIVE ADOPTIVE PARENT STATISTIC:

One word says it all.   RESEARCH.  If you do not know how or do not like doing research then pay someone to do it for you.  Finding out all you can about the AGENCY, the COUNTRY (particularly about the country’s adoption program), and the people the agency use when you are IN COUNTRY is CRUCIAL.  I am not capitalizing things for fun.  

If you do not do at least five solid hours, and preferably ten, of research on your agency you are risking not finding out everything you possibly can.  Finding out that they are having issues when you have already plunked down $10,000 is not how you want to do it.  Look at everything you can in relation to your agency.  How long have they been in business?  Where do they operate out of?  A commercial building or their home?  Who runs the business?  What comes up when you google the names of everyone you can find associated with that agency.  Look at Guidestar.com to see their Federal Reports as a Not For Profit Business.  Do they pay themselves and their top staff exhorbitant amounts?  Do they give much back to charity?  Yes it takes time to register for Guidestar.  DO IT ANYWAY.  Are they a for profit business?  RUN!!!  Have they changed their business name recently?  Several times over the past few years?  Google the other business names.  Talk to all the people they give you a number for a reference.  Then go find your own.  Find people that have used them RECENTLY (last 6 but preferably 3 months) on the net…search Blogger and WordPress blogs for the name of your prospective agency.  Use the Advanced function on Google.  Don’t know what I am talking about?  TAKE THE TIME AND FIND OUT.  Can’t find people to talk to then reconsider the agency.  Join Yahoo adoption listserv groups and ask questions.  Search the archives of those groups by punching in the name of your prospective adoption agency.  Ask your friends and family if they can help with the research.  Tell them you will take out to dinner anyone who can find information on the net that is negative about your prospective agency.  This is what you are looking for the most.  Good things are good – don’t get me wrong but what you need to know is WHAT IS WRONG OR GOING WRONG WITH THIS AGENCY?  When you can’t find anything – that is when you know you have a winner.

WHAT I HAVE SEEN:

1) An agency that operated out of its owners multimillion dollar home that was referring out the same child to multiple clients – breaking the hearts of those clients when the child was adopted before they got to Kaz and managing its money badly.  They ran out of money at some point because they were not paying their in country helpers and so at least one couple (and possibly more) ended up coming back to the States without a child.  However, scads of clients right before this truly unlucky client dealt with pretty horrible in country adoption experiences.  Trust me when I say if everything goes right International Adoption is a pretty exhausting (emotionally and physically) process already.  You don’t need any more drama or trauma added into the mix.  Now if you go back about a year you will find clients that were thrilled and very happy with this agency.  Moral of the story:  GOOD AGENCIES CAN GO BAD OVER TIME.  

2) A very large and very well known and highly respected agency that has done probably thousands of adoptions in at least ten different countries ran into problems because of some errant employees and their actions.  In addition to this they seem to be taking on clients left and right and overbook their resources.  Meaning they couldn’t handle all of these clients for about two years.  Do you want to be the client that has to wait two year vs. 9 months to be able to adopt?  Moral of the story:  EVEN LARGE WELL KNOWN AND HIGHLY RESPECTED AGENCIES CAN HAVE SERIOUS ISSUES.  Don’t assume that just because they are large and do a lot of business that they are fine.  Again with this agency if you spoke with its clients a year ago you would have been speaking to very happy clients.  Being current with information is critical in International Adoption.  What happened last year doesn’t count.  If the information you are getting is older than 6 months I wouldn’t even consider it to make any decisions. 

(MORE COMING PLEASE CHECK BACK THIS POSTING WILL BE FINISHED WITHIN THE NEXT TWO WEEKS BUT THIS INFORMATION IS VOLUMINOUS AND IT TAKES TIME TO GET IT RIGHT)

If you are a PAP that was the victim of one of these above agencies please know that I am not judging you.  You are the good people that have love and kindness in your heart.  You became entangled with people who were deceptive, incompetent, lazy, morally bankrupt, unorganized, and some were downright evil.  I believe that whenever something goes wrong it is wise to try and learn from the situation and learn from other people’s situations so that you do not have to go through the same thing.  Realize that this posting is coming from the anger that I feel about your situation and your experiences…and my wish that no one experience what you experienced.

If you are a PAP (prospective adoptive parent) and have not even taken the time to read even this small page of information then I can only say…..good luck to you……there are wonderful people associated with International Adoption and there are hideous people associated with International Adoption.  They don’t wear a sign identifying who they are and they don’t look like Cruela Deville.  It is your job to figure out who is who and what is what.