From Adoption 101: How to Adopt a Child:

2. Attend an adoption orientation.

While not all agencies, attorneys, and facilitators hold adoption orientations, be sure to attend one if they do. You can learn a wealth of information about an adoption professional by attending the orientation.

Personalities of Adoption Professionals

You will meet the people with... more

The adoption orientation started out with a basic history of the agency, none of which mattered to me. I came with two questions in this order:

How long will it take to adopt my baby? How much is this going to cost?

That’s pretty much all I cared about. Neither of those questions were answered during the presentation, so they were the first two covered in the Q&A session.

Somebody asked how long it would take to adopt a baby through Catholic Social Services (CSS). The leader said... more

To find an adoption agency, I figured that the first step was to get out the yellow pages and look under “A.” How else would you adopt a baby? I had never heard of private adoptions or newborn foster care adoptions. The little I knew came from watching TV shows where birthfamilies always seemed to be popping up to reconnect with their long lost birth relatives who had been placed for adoption years ago. There were not that many places listed under “Adoption Agencies,” and I did not have a clue how to even get started.

Fortunately, a co-worker... more