Referral Service

After much praying and Google searching we have come up with a plan B.  It is common for adoptive families to switch agencies or go with several agencies to increase their chances of being matched more quickly.  However Sam and I have wanted to be very careful with our resources.  I called one agency to inquire and they wanted $16,000 just to sign on with them- Pass! 

What I came upon after a million hours of research is that there are a few non-agencies called referral services that are basically a husband and wife or adoptive mom that has formed close relationships with adoption agencies and attorneys and when the agencies can't find a match from within their client list they tell these referral services about the situations that still need adoptive families.  They then pass on these situations to people like me.

Basically instead of being exposed to situations that one agency is aware of we theoretically should be dealing with situations from 10-30 agencies and lawyers.  In case you are wondering we have not heard from our agency since December.  I don't think they are being negligent, I just don't think there has been any situations they think would be right for us or they have shown birth-mothers our profile and they said no way. 

Besides having access to a wider amount of resources and areas the best thing about these referral services is that the upfront commitment to start being exposed to any situations is so small.  Basically how it works is this:

- You fill out a basic application, send your completed home study write up, and send your "Dear Birth-mother" profile.
- Referral Service charges $100 to put you in their database and start trying to match you.
- As the referral service is presented with situations that fit what you have said you are open to (Gender, race, handicaps, age...) they send you an email with the details of the situation.  The email might say something like: "Caucasian baby girl due 5/19/13.  No known use of drugs.  Mother reports mild use of alcohol early in pregnancy.  Mother requests photos, letters, and once a year visits after placement.  Expected budget $30,000."
- If they send us a situation that we are interested in we can then reply and say that we would like our profile shown to the mother.
- The referral service would then overnight our profile to the mother.
-If she said yes to us then we would have to enter into an agreement with the lawyer or agency that was representing her.
- At this time we would also pay the referral service an additional $1,400 for successfully matching us.
- If the placement fell through because the mother changed her mind the referral service would continue to try to match us without charging any additional fees.  However, depending on the agency we could loose any money we had to pay them or be bound to use them for the next match attempt.

It will be interesting to see how this works and how long it takes for us to even be presented with any situations.  It will also be very very interesting to see which of these avenues end up leading us to Isaiah.  We are going to sign up with the three services that I have ready incredibly positive things about.  The great thing is that if they don't match us we don't pay so it really doesn't hurt to sign up with a few.  I would honestly love for our main agency to be the one that matches us because I really like them and we wouldn't have to travel out of state but... we will see.