Services:

• Birthparent Counseling & Support
• Adoptive Parent Preparation & Education
• Adoptive Placement Services
• Homestudies, Including Independent, Foreign & Stepparent Adoption
• Help for the Lifelong Issues of Adoption
• Community Education
• Family Therapy Specializing in Bonding & Attachment Issues
• Blended Family Counseling

Seeking a Placement Through Open Adoptive Services

We Are Here to Help
As a couple investigating adoption for the first time, you may be infertile and unable to conceive, or if able to conceive, the wife is unable to carry a pregnancy to term, or a pregnancy is dangerous to her health. In these cases, adoption can be the wonderful solution to your family building dream.

We ask that adoptive couples come to us prepared for an open adoption with direct contact, but it is also the birthparent’s option to have a confidential closed adoption and we will gather as much background information as possible and maintain an ongoing mediation role.

We Want to Know About You
You may be a couple who is already parenting but wish to expand your family. You are looking for that child that needs you. We primarily place healthy infants but many times a year we have a young child or an infant with special needs that comes our way. In those times we want to have good resource families available. 

We Ask of You
As a licensed child-placing agency we provide complete adoption placement services, from initial phone intake to finalization of an adoption. Our goal is to educate and prepare for not just the placement of a child but for the many years of parenting in adoption. 
 
We ask that you have been married at least three (3) years, be between the ages of 25 and 45, and in good health. We are willing to discuss exceptions with those who fall outside these perimeters.

What does the process involve?
Our infant adoption process begins with a contact through this website, email and a call to our adoptive parent coordinator, Maureen Reilly.  In the intake conversation we can discuss your circumstances and adoption needs and answer your immediate questions.

Following initial screening and application the adoptive couple attends a two-day seminar in our office for education about openness, birthparent needs, legal issues, and attachment.  We find couples come away with a greater sense of trust and belief in adoption’s positive outcome.  They tell us over and over that it is an invaluable experience in adoption preparation.   

Most couples find us at the beginning of their adoption journey while others come with a prepared homestudy and are searching for a placing agency.  We consider accepting other studies on a case-by-case basis.  If we agreed to continue, the couple’s next step is the seminar and ongoing contact to better get to know one another on the way to the Waiting Pool.

When we are preparing the adoptive homestudy it is our responsibility to evaluate a couple’s motivation to adopt and their overall stability. We seek information from the couple, their friends, and physicians as well as gather documentation of birth, marriage, insurance, income tax returns, first aid training, and criminal or child abuse clearances. 

Following either the acceptance or completion of the homestudy the couple submits portfolios, and enters the Waiting Pool and is shown to birthparent(s).  It is our commitment to guide the birth and adoptive parents in communication and relationship building and remain available for support during and after the adoptive placement. In addition, we are in close consultation with our agency attorney and do all legal preparation for the birthparent relinquishment steps.

Want to Know More?
From the desk of Maureen:

I often refer to my work in adoption as a personal passion. It is something I have lived and breathed for nearly 30 years.  I am an adoptive mom who experienced infertility, a biological mom who had that “surprise” baby years later, a foster mom, a counselor working with birthmothers, and now a guide for prospective adoptive couples. 

My first approach to adoption came at the news of our infertility. The decision to adopt was a relief from the struggles to conceive and adoption became a logical option to a very illogical condition.  Within a year we adopted our daughter, Lindsay, in an independent adoption. Then came Christopher through an agency placement.  It was during these adoptions that I met Nancy Johnson and Kathy Seely as social workers for our birthmothers. 

Our children were placed in closed adoptions in a time it was common practice.  However, there was always that painful spot in my heart for a mom Lindsay would never know – someone I could never thank.  About a year after the placement the mother found her way back to counseling with a need to meet us and to know her baby was safe.  This opened the door to what has become a long-term friendship that goes beyond the placement.

The story of my son has a little different twist but a similar outcome. It involved a birthmother that found it too painful to have contact at first, but chose to reconnect when he was two.  Both adoptions gradually went from closed to open with information shared between parents and then the children, meeting at special events with extended families, and children growing up knowing they were loved by all. 

Lindsay and Chris have been able to articulate their feelings about adoption through each developmental stage of their lives.  They say they felt they had answers before they had questions!  It is through them that I have developed a deep understanding of growing up adopted and for the language that I share with adopting couples today.

Over all these years of adoption work and parenting I have learned that healthy adoption begins with honesty and openness.  As birth and adoptive parents seek to understand their roles they are more accepting of the other. Their willingness to connect on a personal level, meeting and having direct contact enhances the awareness of needs in adoption and diminishes fears. 

My goal is to educate and prepare couples for the lifelong parenting in adoption.  My desire is to see empowered birthmothers, entitled adoptive parents, and children raised to happy healthy adulthood.