Our adoption

We are using a local adoption agency to do our homestudy and follow-up meetings. Family Adoption Consultants.

FAC does not have an Ethiopian program, so we are using Children's Home Society and Family Services to do the international part.

We chose FAC because we had worked through them before with Miss Bossy. Unfortunately, the agency we used with Sports Dude no longer exists.

We also a couple years or so ago, began a foster care program with another agency in our area. After a year of going through the process, we discovered that the workers actually had no idea what we were doing. We took that as a sign from God that we should not be going through the program. Then we began with CHSFS and FAC for an international adoption.

 I am going to paste an e-mail Mom sent me about why they chose CHSFS and FAC. It was easier if Mom wrote to me, rather than telling me and me forgetting or me having to type the whole thing up. And of course, she and Dad are the ones who made the decision, so she knows what she's saying more than me! :) So here is what Mom says....

First, we chose the country before the agency. So after we knew we should switch from foster care adoption to Ethiopia, we started looking at agencies. We prayed! We knew a family who had adopted from Ethiopia and took their advice regarding which agencies to avoid and which seemed to be reputable. We looked at the ones who had established (not new) Ethiopia programs. A big factor for us was the agency’s ethics, in particular how their policies reflected their view of adoption and children. Children’s Home Society and Family Services (of Minnesota) had an established Ethiopia program, a good reputation, and had policies that reflected good ethics. One of their policies was that they did not allow artificial twinning. That is when two babies are placed with the same family even though the babies are not related. Babies go through so many changes before and during the adoption process, that they do not need any more challenges such as Mom and Dad trying to parent two babies at the same time. Also, they would have to deal with people asking questions constantly about whether they were twins and why not, etc. At first we didn’t like the policy, but then we realized it was better for the children and the agency cared more about the children’s adjustment and successful adoption than about the desires of potential adoptive parents. We also found out more about the care center in Ethiopia and the high standard of care the children received there. As we looked into the agency more we found out that they only had one partnering agency here in Michigan for the home study portion and that agency was in Kalamazoo! And we had used that very agency for our last adoption! Since we had been praying for direction as we researched, we took that as confirmation that we should move forward with CHSFS.