Private vs. Public Agencies

The key advantage of a private agency adoption is the extensive counseling that agencies provide. Typically, counseling is available for adoptive parents, birth parents, and the children (if they are older). Careful counseling can help everyone involved weather the emotional, practical, and legal complexities that can arise throughout the adoption process. And it's particularly important for the protection is provides the adoptive parents. A birth parent who receives appropriate counseling early in the process is less likely to change her mind when it comes time to sign the actual consent forms after the baby's birth.

On the down side, private agencies are often extremely selective when choosing adoptive parents. This is because they have a surplus of people who want to adopt and a limited number of available children. Agencies weed out parents based on age, marital status, income, health, religion, sexual orientation, family size, and personal history (including criminal conduct).

Public agencies have many children ready to be adopted, but they are often older or special-needs children. If you want a newborn or an infant, a public agency may not be able to help you. And public agencies generally do not provide the many other services, such as much-needed counseling, that private agencies offer. Of course, along with offering fewer services, public agencies come at a much lower cost. It may cost you next to nothing to adopt through a public agency (and the agency may even provide a small stipend during the adoption process), whereas a private agency adoption will cost many thousands of dollars.

Even if you do use an agency, you will probably need to hire a lawyer to draft the adoption petition and to represent you at the hearing. Although there is no legal requirement that a lawyer be involved in an adoption, the process can be quite complex and should be handled by someone with experience and expertise. When seeking a lawyer, find out how many adoptions he or she has handled, and whether any of them were contested or developed other complications.