Has Anyone Used Adoptions Together?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We used Adoptions Together to form our family. During our experience with them they were helpful, responsive, ethical, thorough, and able to guide us through the process. This was over 10 years ago, so things may have changed. But we've also had various follow-up interactions with them over the years which were all also positive and helpful.

OP is interested in their program to adopt from foster care. Did you do this or adopt an infant? The programs are so different (not just at AT but at Barker and other places) that knowing about one is not too helpful for learning about the other.

[Anonymous]

This agency discriminates and I would not recommend. We used them several years ago for our homestudy and felt we were discriminated against. My husband and I are two attorneys in Washington DC but we had school debt and had not acquired a lot of equity yet. Adoptions Together told us they could not support our homestudy until we had more money. We had a great financial support network, not to mention promising future financial security, but promised donations were not sufficient for Adoptions Together (now Pathways for Families). At the same time we were adopting, our friends who happen to be a homosexual couple and in the exact same financial status as we were, were fast tracked with Adoptions Together and told the agency would work with them on their finances.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This agency discriminates and I would not recommend. We used them several years ago for our homestudy and felt we were discriminated against. My husband and I are two attorneys in Washington DC but we had school debt and had not acquired a lot of equity yet. Adoptions Together told us they could not support our homestudy until we had more money. We had a great financial support network, not to mention promising future financial security, but promised donations were not sufficient for Adoptions Together (now Pathways for Families). At the same time we were adopting, our friends who happen to be a homosexual couple and in the exact same financial status as we were, were fast tracked with Adoptions Together and told the agency would work with them on their finances.

Adoption is not about finding infants for willing adults but about finding parents for children who do not have a family. Its purpose is not to remove a family but to provide one when there is none.
The agency most likely had some reasons to turn you down.

The cost of the adoption and cost of raising a child is only one factor.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This agency discriminates and I would not recommend. We used them several years ago for our homestudy and felt we were discriminated against. My husband and I are two attorneys in Washington DC but we had school debt and had not acquired a lot of equity yet. Adoptions Together told us they could not support our homestudy until we had more money. We had a great financial support network, not to mention promising future financial security, but promised donations were not sufficient for Adoptions Together (now Pathways for Families). At the same time we were adopting, our friends who happen to be a homosexual couple and in the exact same financial status as we were, were fast tracked with Adoptions Together and told the agency would work with them on their finances.

Adoption is not about finding infants for willing adults but about finding parents for children who do not have a family. Its purpose is not to remove a family but to provide one when there is none.
The agency most likely had some reasons to turn you down.

The cost of the adoption and cost of raising a child is only one factor.

Did you read the post?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This agency discriminates and I would not recommend. We used them several years ago for our homestudy and felt we were discriminated against. My husband and I are two attorneys in Washington DC but we had school debt and had not acquired a lot of equity yet. Adoptions Together told us they could not support our homestudy until we had more money. We had a great financial support network, not to mention promising future financial security, but promised donations were not sufficient for Adoptions Together (now Pathways for Families). At the same time we were adopting, our friends who happen to be a homosexual couple and in the exact same financial status as we were, were fast tracked with Adoptions Together and told the agency would work with them on their finances.

Adoption is not about finding infants for willing adults but about finding parents for children who do not have a family. Its purpose is not to remove a family but to provide one when there is none.
The agency most likely had some reasons to turn you down.

The cost of the adoption and cost of raising a child is only one factor.

Did you read the post?

Yes
The agency thought they were not a good candidate and declined them knowing they would fail the home study

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This agency discriminates and I would not recommend. We used them several years ago for our homestudy and felt we were discriminated against. My husband and I are two attorneys in Washington DC but we had school debt and had not acquired a lot of equity yet. Adoptions Together told us they could not support our homestudy until we had more money. We had a great financial support network, not to mention promising future financial security, but promised donations were not sufficient for Adoptions Together (now Pathways for Families). At the same time we were adopting, our friends who happen to be a homosexual couple and in the exact same financial status as we were, were fast tracked with Adoptions Together and told the agency would work with them on their finances.

Adoption is not about finding infants for willing adults but about finding parents for children who do not have a family. Its purpose is not to remove a family but to provide one when there is none.
The agency most likely had some reasons to turn you down.

The cost of the adoption and cost of raising a child is only one factor.

Did you read the post?

Yes
The agency thought they were not a good candidate and declined them knowing they would fail the home study

Many agencies turn down people who would be good parents for all kinds of reasons, especially in MD, where they don't have enough children for the demand and they want to focus on specific populations to boost their organization. Its often about many other factors and often very bias, racist and much more.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This agency discriminates and I would not recommend. We used them several years ago for our homestudy and felt we were discriminated against. My husband and I are two attorneys in Washington DC but we had school debt and had not acquired a lot of equity yet. Adoptions Together told us they could not support our homestudy until we had more money. We had a great financial support network, not to mention promising future financial security, but promised donations were not sufficient for Adoptions Together (now Pathways for Families). At the same time we were adopting, our friends who happen to be a homosexual couple and in the exact same financial status as we were, were fast tracked with Adoptions Together and told the agency would work with them on their finances.

Adoption is not about finding infants for willing adults but about finding parents for children who do not have a family. Its purpose is not to remove a family but to provide one when there is none.
The agency most likely had some reasons to turn you down.

The cost of the adoption and cost of raising a child is only one factor.

Did you read the post?

Yes
The agency thought they were not a good candidate and declined them knowing they would fail the home study

Many agencies turn down people who would be good parents for all kinds of reasons, especially in MD, where they don't have enough children for the demand and they want to focus on specific populations to boost their organization. It’s often about many other factors and often very bias, racist and much more.

You said it yourself: the number of infants available for adoption is much less than the number of people wanting to adopt.
Are you expecting the agency to push more people into their books knowing that they cannot possibly have a match?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This agency discriminates and I would not recommend. We used them several years ago for our homestudy and felt we were discriminated against. My husband and I are two attorneys in Washington DC but we had school debt and had not acquired a lot of equity yet. Adoptions Together told us they could not support our homestudy until we had more money. We had a great financial support network, not to mention promising future financial security, but promised donations were not sufficient for Adoptions Together (now Pathways for Families). At the same time we were adopting, our friends who happen to be a homosexual couple and in the exact same financial status as we were, were fast tracked with Adoptions Together and told the agency would work with them on their finances.

Adoption is not about finding infants for willing adults but about finding parents for children who do not have a family. Its purpose is not to remove a family but to provide one when there is none.
The agency most likely had some reasons to turn you down.

The cost of the adoption and cost of raising a child is only one factor.

Did you read the post?

Yes
The agency thought they were not a good candidate and declined them knowing they would fail the home study

Many agencies turn down people who would be good parents for all kinds of reasons, especially in MD, where they don't have enough children for the demand and they want to focus on specific populations to boost their organization. It’s often about many other factors and often very bias, racist and much more.

You said it yourself: the number of infants available for adoption is much less than the number of people wanting to adopt.
Are you expecting the agency to push more people into their books knowing that they cannot possibly have a match?

Then be honest. Don’t make up nonsense reasons to deny people.

[Anonymous]

Adoption agency is a business, not a benevolent humanitarian organization

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We used Adoptions Together to form our family. During our experience with them they were helpful, responsive, ethical, thorough, and able to guide us through the process. This was over 10 years ago, so things may have changed. But we've also had various follow-up interactions with them over the years which were all also positive and helpful.

OP is interested in their program to adopt from foster care. Did you do this or adopt an infant? The programs are so different (not just at AT but at Barker and other places) that knowing about one is not too helpful for learning about the other.

You are far better off fostering-adopting through the county.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Adoption agency is a business, not a benevolent humanitarian organization

It is a business but its not supposed to be and it is supposed to be a benevolent humanitarian organization.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Adoption agency is a business, not a benevolent humanitarian organization

Yes it’s a business but AT, now Pathways for families is a non profit.
We adopted from them in 2012. Happy with the process. Our HHI at the time was 140k.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This agency discriminates and I would not recommend. We used them several years ago for our homestudy and felt we were discriminated against. My husband and I are two attorneys in Washington DC but we had school debt and had not acquired a lot of equity yet. Adoptions Together told us they could not support our homestudy until we had more money. We had a great financial support network, not to mention promising future financial security, but promised donations were not sufficient for Adoptions Together (now Pathways for Families). At the same time we were adopting, our friends who happen to be a homosexual couple and in the exact same financial status as we were, were fast tracked with Adoptions Together and told the agency would work with them on their finances.

Maybe they thought if you are both attorneys working long hours, you wouldn’t have much time for a child or children.
There are other couples out there with more time to spend with a family.

[Anonymous]

I was not impressed with the person they had doing the homestudies (a ton of factual and grammatical errors, and it took a long time), they were not familiar with DC (how to get a kid on DC Medicaid, the DC school lottery process, they told me to apply for LISS not knowing that's only a MD thing, and their therapists could not bill DC Medicaid), and they had a lot of staff transition. I don't think anyone from my orientation group successfully adopted a child--they also didn't have any staff who had adopted from foster care. It might be better if you live in MD than DC.

Some of it, I think, was that kids' workers tend to gloss over really hard stuff in order to get a kid placed. But kids who a state is willing to place out of state in a "waiting child" adoption all have really tough issues--to the point that their extended families, foster parents, and other local foster parents have all said no to adopting them. They have been through more moves than most foster kids and often been in care longer. The type of parent who is capable of handling that is really rare. I think AT should probably dissuade more people from taking placement of kids, really help scrutinize what prospective parents are being told by the kids' workers, and/or give a LOT more support. My experience is a few years old though so hopefully it has changed. I would ask them what percentage of people who completed the training and homestudy with them in the past 5 or 10 years have a child placed, what percentage of those placements result in adoption, what percentage of the kids placed require hospitalization and/or institutional care in the first couple years of placement, and how many of the adoptions were disrupted after being finalized.

If you are someone who can handle adoption of a waiting child that is fantastic and I wish you all the best--it is desperately needed and as much as I hoped I could do it, I couldn't.

This is really good advice. There is so much that is covered by adoption agencies in the pursuit of getting older children (i.e., any child who is not an infant) adopted.

[Anonymous]

meant "covered up by adoption agencies". They really do not want to admit when kids have severe behavioral or mental health issues. You have to read descriptions like you would a real estate listing. Instead of "cozy" meaning "small" think "high energy" meaning ADHD, or "needs structure" meaning "behaviorally very difficult". Older child adoptions are difficult. When you miss that early infant bonding time and the child misses out on early infant security, it is extremely difficult---if not impossible---to overcome. You need to go into it understanding that you are providing a loving environment to someone who may never be able to bond to you or even consider you as anything other than a temporary caretaker until age 18.