A New Way To Adopt A Baby

Are you aware of the new type of adoption that exists today? It is called agency-assisted adoption. In today's episode, we are going to talk about agency-assisted adoption, how it differs from a full-service agency adoption, and how you can use it in conjunction with self-matching in order to save yourself money in your adoption process.

Now let's dive into this. I am so excited. So we have talked till I am quite literally blue in the face about the nine different ways you can adopt a child on the Youtube channel, in this podcast, on the blog, and in the Facebook group. By the way, if you haven't joined the free Facebook group, head on over to Facebook and check out the My Adoption Coach Facebook group. 

But I am going to give you just a brief overview of what those nine different ways are now to adopt a child, because you may be new to adoption. And if you're new to adoption, my friend, you need to check out Finding Your Perfect Adoption Pathway. Finding your perfect adoption pathway is designed to help you choose what type of adoption is right for you in less than four hours and for less than 30 bucks. So you need to check it out. I mean it when I say I'm here to help you every step of the way and make it super approachable, affordable, and friendly. 

I am going to give you an overview of the nine different types of adoption. But I'm not going to give you a full deep dive into that; if you need that, there are tons of other blog posts that you can go back and read, YouTube videos that you can watch, or you can just head on over to myadoptioncoach.com/pathway. And check out that program and make your decision in under four hours.

Overview of the Different Types of Adoption: Which One Is Right for You?

International adoption: That's where you're adopting a child from another country. Right, that is eligible for adoption. 

Foster care adoption: That is where you're adopting a child from your state through a state agency or government body that is eligible for adoption. 

Surrogacy: In certain states, surrogacy is considered adoption just based on the way the adoption law is written there.

Embryo adoption: This is where you are adopting someone else's genetic material to either carry yourself to term to produce a healthy pregnancy or potentially work with a surrogate to carry that genetic material. There are all types of amazing embryo adoption resources out there. By the way, there are specific grants for their specific nonprofits that are actually the guardians of these embryos. That would be the party that you would work with to adopt from—like nightlight Christian adoptions—the National Embryo Donation Center, and believe it or not, your fertility doctor may also have embryos that you can adopt. So that's worth looking into as well. 

An adoption consultant: An adoption consultant is also sometimes called a facilitator or mediator. There are a couple of different terms that you may hear based upon, honestly, your particular area of expertise, but an adoption consultant's job is to share your profile and your intention to adopt with several different agencies, basically just to help you network. Theoretically, it's to help you match faster. Whether that happens or not, I don't know; you'll have to vet each one individually to make that determination. But that is a type of adoption that you can consider. 

An adoption attorney: Now, it may sound a little tricky and confusing, because you have to use an adoption attorney in order to finalize your adoption. So you're like, “How do you use an adoption attorney to adopt?” What's different? They're here for this type of adoption, so you would actually be using the attorney to actually match the option. So sometimes attorneys will deploy an edit option profile expert like yours truly to help create profiles and share them through Google ads, Facebook ads, and things of that nature. But other times, adoption attorneys will actually have expectant parents reach out to them, and they'll match you that way. So it's possible to match with adoption attorneys that way. 

Understanding the Differences Between Full Service, Self-Matching, and Agency Assisted Adoptions

The next type of adoption, this is really where we're going to start kind of parsing through self-matching, agency assisted, and full-service agency among the three, and really, what are the differences? 

Let's talk about a full-service agency so that it helps you understand the differences between the three.

So a full-service adoption agency is really going to work, not only with you from start to finish but also from the prospective parents’ perspective from start to finish. So what is really important to understand here is that a full-service agency is going to give you recommendations on each step of the process, right? So when it comes to the home study, when it comes to creating your profile and sharing your profile, they're going to do all of those things on your behalf. But then, from an expectant parent's perspective, they're going to reach out to them, they're going to connect with them, and they're going to determine what type of services they need throughout their adoption journey. And those services could include things like maybe they need mental health services to process the grief that they're going through, maybe they need housing services, and they need to be set up with government services in order to support them with housing, or with food stamps, or with Medicaid or Medicare, you know, those types of things. And so they're really going to help them get the services that they mean. But most agencies—not all, but most—will also help them prepare for their next stage after the baby's birth. So they will help them create a really kind of life plan, if you will, that will help them with the services that they need to create, you know, to really fulfill that plan, and then, of course, they're going to do this within the bounds of the law. So they're going to work and understand with an adoption attorney: what are the legal, you know, requirements or restrictions in those states? How much housing support can you provide? How much living support can you provide? What are the other types of ways that they can help improve their lives after a baby is born? Now, these are often presented as options, right? As well as options on services, this will help the parents. And this can be seen as controversial. This really is the role of the agency. And this is to provide options for placing the baby and options for not placing the baby so that the expectant parents can thrive following the birth of the child. And that really is, quite honestly, where a lot of the investment in the agency adoption model can go if your agency is really highly reputable. 

Other agencies have a lot of incremental fees and things that they don't give you a lot of visibility to, which quite honestly has been a main reason why self-matching adoption came about. So the self-matched adoption, really, is the idea that you have gone on your own to find all of the relevant adoption professionals that you need, right? You have hired an adoption attorney to understand the law in your state. You work through your adoption home study, and then you work with an adoption profile expert to create and share your profile, or to teach you how to do those things. If that's what you want to do, then you've gone out and made the match, right with an expected family. Maybe you met them through a friend of a friend; maybe you met them through a Google ad. Maybe you met them through a Facebook group. Maybe you met them through a flyer on a laundromat wall. All of those are real examples of clients that I've coached through the self-matching process.

But there's always been this opportunity space. at that point. Once you match, how do you really support your expected family in the way that they need you to give them the services and the support that they need not only from a financial perspective but also from a mental health perspective? That has been, honestly, the biggest downfall in self-matching. But as of recently, the agency-assisted portion of coming in and focusing on those service pieces after you've partnered with these other professionals has really been a way that my clients have been providing the type of support that they want to give to their expectant families to make sure that they're going to thrive after placement or to make sure that they have options to thrive if they don't place has been a way that you can really overcome some of the challenges that exist in self-matching.

I think it is a really interesting opportunity that agency-assisted adoptions are really filling in the overall process of private adoption. And really, what it is doing is giving control back to the hopeful adoptive families from a budgeting perspective; it has given you the option to go out and find the right professionals that fit within your budget, based upon your own timeline, quite honestly, so that you can support your expectant families in the right way. So let's break that down a little bit more. I shared a lot there, and that may be a little confusing. So a lot of agencies, when you're working with a full-service agency, are going to have some sort of big upfront cost, right? And in that big upfront cost, they're going to say you have to pay, you know, a $5,000 fee to begin working with us. Right. And that's just a fee, mind you; that fee typically doesn't cover anything else. Sometimes they'll call it an application fee. Sometimes they'll just call it a fee, you know, like, an introduction fee. I've seen a few packets as of late, and my fourth is an intersection fee, which basically means it's just a fee to work with them or for the honor or privilege of working with them. So if you’re starting to work with them, you're going to have to pay that fee up front. If you are working with an adoption attorney, most of them don't require you to spend very much to get started. Some of them require a couple hundred dollars as a retainer so that they can create an agency-client, or excuse me, a client-attorney relationship there so that they can actually legally be your attorney. And most of them aren't going to require much money at all to get started. And instead, you're going to use that money towards your home study, right? Because your home study is the next thing that you really have to invest in, which, by the way, is also a fee that you have to pay to an adoption agency. 

Comparing Adoption Costs: Agency vs. Self-Matching with Agency Assistance

So you've already paid the adoption agency, whatever the initial fee was. And then you have to pay the home study fee, which you're still going to be paying to your adoption home study provider regardless, and then when you kind of move through the process, again comparing a full-service agency versus a self-match with agency assisted, the next thing you're going to be doing, which is oftentimes done in conjunction with your adoption, homes, and home study, is because you want your adoption and home study to be maximized, right? In most states, your home study is only good for one year. So the instant your home study is approved, you want to be sharing your adoption profile so that you can maximize the length of time for your home study, right? So now that your home study has been approved, the next thing you're going to have to do is create your adoption profile. Now, with an adoption agency, they're oftentimes going to have a fee for those adoption profiles; those are the creation services, right? And in their creation services, depending on the agency, that's going to run you $10,000 to $15,000.

Now, if you are self-matching and you want to create your adoption profile with an expert that, you know, guides you through the process, you can do that for around $3,000 or less depending upon what you want to do versus what you want me to do, right? So there's a huge cost savings there about, you know, call it $7,000 On the low end from that. Okay, so the next step in the process is that you're going to be actually sharing your adoption profile, right? Now, if you're working with an adoption agency, they're going to charge you an advertising fee. Okay? What's important to know about this advertising fee, aside from the amount, is that it ranges anywhere from $10 to $15. They haven't seen it as high as $20,000 yet. But in that fee that you're paying them, they are actually advertising their agency because they're trying to attract expectant parents in to find the right match. And so they're talking to people about the benefits of placing a child for adoption with their agency versus your family. This is a huge difference in the self-matching journey. Okay. In self-matching, you are paying the budget you set directly to Facebook's, Google's, and so on. However you plan to share it, you are paying that fee directly to them to see your profile. That is the biggest point of difference when it comes to this step, if you will, in agency adoption versus self-matching. And it really comes down to what you feel comfortable with. Right? Do you want to share? Do you want to spend your dollars with the agency being shared because you need their expertise? And listen, they have expertise; they have a lot of expertise; they've done this for years; likely, this is your first time through this, which is why you need help from someone else to teach you the process and what to do. Or instead of sharing their services, do you want the money that you're spending on sharing your adoption profile to be directed towards youth? That is the big difference there, my friend. 

Understanding the Importance of Support Services in Adoption: Agency-Assisted Adoption vs. Self-Matching

Now, historically, this has been the point at which you would match with an expectant parent, right? So either the agency has brought you someone or you, the expected family, and the hopeful adoptive family have mutually agreed that this is the match. and that this is where you want to, you know, continue on. Or if you're self-matching, you're going to have conversations; you're going to do all of that kind of vetting, if you will, yourself. And then you're going to talk with an adoption attorney. Now, what gets often lost between a full-service agency in this step and a self-matching agency in this step is that the agency is sharing services with the expected family to give them options on how they can parent, so they're giving them services like food stamps, government housing, you know, medical services that are medical, like Medicaid and Medicare, I never get which ones are which, but they are giving those services to them and saying, If you choose to parent, here's half the parent; if you choose not to parent, here's your path for not parenting. But yet, having support services to fulfill the type of life that you want is important, right? They're also giving them mental health services to help them make the decision to place a child for adoption, be confident in that decision, really want to see that decision through, and then have the mental health resources to deal with the grief both during and after the process. Now, when you're self-matching, historically, that's not been something that has happened. Unless the hopeful adoptive family has gone out and sought the grief counselor, they've gone out and figured out how to, you know, set up those services and how to teach the expected family to go and set up those services. That's really been the main disconnect. And quite honestly, self-matching gets a really bad name. with the adoption community as a result. 

That is where agency-assisted adoption comes in. You can pay the agency or some agencies—not all—a fee to come in and do that portion of the support work. So if you were matched with an agency, you've already paid them for that, right? It's either wrapped into one of those fees or it's a separate fee, again, because every agency is different. But if you're self-matching and you want the agency to step in and help with mental health resources to help with, you know, housing, medical, or financial resources, they can step in and do that for a reduced fee. Now, I've seen this fee, depending on the body that's providing this service, for self-matching be anywhere from $3,000 to $7,000. Now, some agencies, on the other hand, are full-service agencies, and if they call it out, most of the time they don't. But if they call it out, it's somewhere between $10,000 and $15,000. Right? It just really depends upon each different type of agency out there. Because there are so many different in there is no one like a specific governing body or something that you have to use or to adhere to, for how you break out your fees. And so that is where agency assisted adoption is a really interesting way to come alongside self-matching adoption and provide the types of services that really do help expectant parents thrive and be confident in their decision, which, quite honestly, is the number one reason why self-matching adoptions end up not going through because the actual support that is needed for expectant parents has not been there.

So I think I've been a little bit on my soapbox there on the differences between a full-service agency and an agency-assisted option. When you use it in conjunction with self-matching adoption, it is a little bit tricky. It is a new and different space. It is something we are going to be talking a lot about in the Facebook group. So if you haven't joined us over there, please check it out. But remember, my friend, this type of adoption is totally possible; it is possible to save yourself money. 

Now the trick is that you have to understand how to navigate it. And that is why you need to work with an adoption coach who is there in your corner every step of the way to help you through it.

So I hope you found this episode incredibly valuable. If you have, I really would appreciate it if you'd share it with a friend. If you'd go share it in one of those Facebook groups, but most importantly, if you would take action from it. My goal and my desire in life are to help reduce the overwhelm and unnecessary expense of your adoption journey. And remember, I'm here with you every step of the way. I'll see you soon friend