healthyontheinside said: What does the money go towards? Or is it just a profit making exercise by the agency?
There’s a fee for the home study, which covers the cost of the federal background check and the social worker doing our home visit as well as the time for the state to review it and approve it.
The rest covers agency fees which I assume goes towards things like the salary of the social worker, the counselor for the birth parent and other operational costs.
Placement fees help cover some of the birth parent’s cost and post placement fees cover the actual adoption.
I doubt there is very much actual profit involved here for them, the agency we’re working with is a non profit agency run through Jewish Family Services. They are by far the least expensive option we’ve found for infant adoption in our county. By thousands. The only other option that is less expensive here is adopting through foster care. Which can take years and is considerably more emotionally expensive than I personally have the heart for right now.
Personally, I don’t have a problem paying this much money for an adoption. Yes, it sucks. Yes, it’s likely going to mean we are in debt for at least a little while. Yes, it’s a pain in the ass and means we’ll likely only ever have one child. BUT I would rather go through this inconvenience and jump through these hoops than have babies basically given away to any whackaloon who wants one. If this $14-16k covers making sure we’re not child abusers, sex traffickers or delusional psychopaths who just want to build a tiny army for the oncoming apocalypse, then its totally worth it to me.
When we met with our adoption coordinator I didn’t see any evidence of an abundance of profits: it’s a small office, staffed by one part time social worker who is a retired child protective services worker. She wore normal looking clothes and had a cell phone older than mine. Her office shares space with the rest of Jewish Family Services which is an organization that houses a food pantry, counseling services and other social services for not just people in the Jewish faith but also the community at large. Literally anyone is welcome to come use their food pantry if they need food.
If part of our adoption money goes into continuing to stock that food pantry, again I say, totally worth it.
Sorry if I sound a mite defensive. Since we’ve started really moving forward with this adoption we’ve apparently opened ourselves up to a lot of judgey and kinda rude comments, questions and “advice.”
