“Where does my money go when I donate to your adoption fund?”

It might be something you’ve wondered or thought about- I know when I give, I want to know how my money is being used. In an effort to be fully transparent and real, I wanted to give you a look into what we are paying for in our third private adoption. Keep in mind, this is specific to our agency, our third adoption, and is not what every private adoption costs. The average cost of private adoption is anywhere from $25,000-$60,000.

 Home Study Fee (due when we had our home study in January):

A social worker from our agency inspects our home, conducts interviews, manages our case and writes a home study report.

Fee to be an active waiting family (funded through grants from Show Hope, Pure Gift of God and Lifesong for Orphans, as well as your generous donations)

During this part of the process, we created a profile book about our family as well as a profile that is online here. This is what expectant parents see when making an adoption plan. This is how our family has been matched with our girls’ birth families. Our social worker helped us with what to include, how to make it “us” on paper so that an expectant mom feels that we are the same in the book as we are in person. We are also decided what we are open to as far as drug and alcohol exposure, mental health, physical and mental differences, etc. and created a plan with our social worker. This is called our service plan. Social workers use this when giving profile books to expectant parents to make sure the families that they are seeing are open to their specific situation. 

Fee due when we are placed with a baby (funded through grants from Show Hope, Pure Gift of God and Lifesong for Orphans, as well as your generous donations)

This fee covers a wide range of services. Some are services provided by our social workers during the hospital time, such as helping us navigate relationships with doctors and nurses if we go to the hospital or helping birth parents process their emotions and grief. Services also include counseling for birth parents and creating documents with family history for the child to have as they grow up. Other fees go toward helping us develop a safe and healthy open relationship with birth family. It also covers the fees needed for adoption finalization- paperwork we need for court, if our social worker needs to be present at any hearings, or if we have any issues with finalization. 

Fee after we bring a baby home (funded through grants from Show Hope, Pure Gift of God and Lifesong for Orphans, as well as your generous donations)

After we bring a baby home, we are required to have 3 in home visits from our social worker. It is mostly to check in on us as new parents. We are screened for post-adoption depression and asked how the transition is going. The social worker makes sure we are doing the things we need to be doing such as doctor appointments, vaccines, making sure the baby is thriving. 

TOTAL FEES: $30,450

Follow along with our fundraising here: https://mystory.lifesongfororphans.org/stories/__trashed-2/

Before we went through the adoption process, I knew nothing about open adoption. I didn’t know why it cost so much money, what questions to ask an agency, or how to be an advocate for birth moms and ethics in adoption. I didn’t understand why adoption costs so much. I didn’t know all the hurdles it took for an adoptive family, or  that all adoptions no matter what the circumstance come from a place of loss. We all start somewhere, and maybe for you, that’s starting here, reading about where the money goes from our adoption fund and learning about  how you are helping to bring baby 3 into our family.