Finding an Adoption Agency

Where does one go to find an adoption agency??? We started with the internet and essentially asked for every agency that had China adoption programs to send us information. We didn’t know if a local (NJ-based) agency was an advantage or not so we did not limit our search geographically. We were inundated with mail pretty quickly. We scanned through all the documentation, but how do you choose?

One agency caught our eye. They were called Children’s Hope International and referred to themselves as CHI. Chi is the universal life force in China, so we took this to be a good sign. We went to their website and saw that the NYC office was having an information meeting in early September, 2004. We decided that we would go to the meeting and meet the people and have our questions ready.

In the meantime, prior to the meeting, I started doing real research on the agency. I called the Attorney General’s office in NY and Saint Louis (the agency’s HQ is St. Louis) to see if there were a lot of complaints/fraud against them. I also checked with the Better Business Bureau in each city to see the same. There were very few complaints, which made me feel pretty good.

I also contacted several couples who had recently adopted via CHI. All gave me positively glowing recommendations, which is what I expected simply because they wouldn’t refer us to someone who was unhappy, right? Still, it felt good to speak with someone who had actually used their services and were pleased with their professionalism.

A great resource for adoption information is the yahoo groups. For China, Adoptive Parents China http://groups.yahoo.com/group/a-parents-china/ was invaluable. I was able to ask people for agency recommendations there as well. It is a great place to ask a question of those who have BTDT.

We filled out a preliminary application and I wrote out a check for $100. I had to include three photos of the two of us. I decided that we would take the application to the information meeting. If we liked what we saw and heard, we would give them the application and check; if not, we would just walk away and look elsewhere.

Were we really doing this? Sure looks like it. The meeting was three days away. I could hardly wait!