Part I. Unraveling the truth about finding an Adoptive Family on the internet:

A call came in one morning from a young woman saying she worked for an agency in California that facilitated adoptions. That was the first time I had ever heard of such a thing. She asked me if I would counsel a birthmother in Texas who had picked a potential adoptive couple in Alabama to adopt her baby. She asked if I would be willing to counsel the birthmother to prepare her for placement after her baby was born. They needed this counseling to meet state requirements. Which state requirements, I asked myself?

I had worked in adoption for licensed adoption agencies during my more than 10 year working career , at the time; using adoption facilitators Finding an Adoptive Family was new and foreign to me. However, when I began to notice the adoption facilitators’ advertisements, their advertisements did not distinguish them from licensed adoption agencies. The advertisements were misleading as they did not directly say they were licensed or in Texas however one had to read closely to be able to understand this. Even today, if you were to type in Google “Texas Adoption Agency” up would come adoption facilitator agencies as if they are Texas adoption agencies. Even though I didn’t know it at the time, I have learned through the years that this is illegal, as it’s against the law in Texas to advertise adoption placement services if you aren’t licensed in Texas to place children for adoption.

So, I was interested how did this all work? I accepted the job and spoke with the potential adoptive family to try and understand. They explained that they paid the facilitator a rather large sum of money to put their profile on the internet. The facilitators would put the adoptive family’s profile on their website and then advertise for pregnant women throughout the United States looking to place their babies for adoption.

“Did you ever meet the facilitators?” I asked the adoptive parents. “No. Everything has occurred on the phone or email.” They answered.

Hmmm. This was all very confusing to me. I had always taken a personal interest in all of the adoptive and birth parents I worked with, meeting and personally staying in contact with them to help them through the highly emotional experience of the placement of a baby through adoption. This all sounded disconnected and impersonal.

Was I wrong? I decided to walk through this before I made my mind up.

My personal experience working with an adoption arranged through a facilitator will continue in Part 2, soon to follow.