Working with a consultant

For lack of really anything to write about this week (other than snow), I thought that I would write a couple of posts about our experiences so far working with our choices of adoption professionals.   

To give a little backstory, we first signed with a facilitator in January 2008 and then, in June 2009, added an adop.tion consultant to the mix.  In this post, I'll be talking about the consultant's part in our quest to adopt.  


Having already been in the adoption process for over a year, ad.option consultants were something new to me.  It was through blogging that I had found others who had used consultants with success.  From what I learned initially, the idea made sense to me.  This was compounded by the fact that I was antsy.  Consultants have multiple and various agency and attorney contacts.  As a client of the consultant, we would have access to situations through those agencies and attorneys with whom they work.  During my research, I found that some consultants strongly encourage that you to apply with a certain number of agencies.  This usually means that you would pay those agency application fees which are typically $250-1,000, on top of the consultant fee.  I knew that this would not go over well with Hubbs...or our savings account.  We had already invested money upfront with a facilitator.  Basically, paying money upfront to one adoption entity (facilitator) meant that any other adoption networking, whether it be with an agency, another facilitator, or attorney, was financially limited for us.   

But I continued to do my research, particularly on consultants, because we needed all of the networking we could get and how they worked was appealing to me.  Consultants seemed to offer more bang for our buck.  I chatted online with others who had worked with consultants, got references, and directly spoke with a number of consultants.

In late June 2009, Hubbs and I bit the bullet and signed with a consultant group based in CO.  We agreed on this one because their clients do not pay any application fees to agencies to have profiles shown and we weren't required to sign with any agencies.  We completed the application and sent the one-time fee (about a quarter of what we had paid our facilitator).  The president/owner of the group called me during the 4th of July weekend after she received the application and fee.  We were going to be assigned to one of the several consultants she had in various parts of the country.  Since we live on the East coast, we were assigned to one in the same time zone.  She has been wonderful.  I feel like we have an advocate working just for us.   When a situation comes through that fits our criteria, she emails me a copy of the intake and we make the decision whether or not to throw our hat into the ring, so to speak. 

We threw our hat in once and lo and behold....we were matched in late August 2009.  Our consultant was the one to tell us the good news.  We then became clients of the agency the expectant mom was working with.  While we were matched, our consultant called me every one or two weeks to check in with me.  I was so glad we had her in our corner, because quite frankly, the agency person was wretched.  The consultant often acted as the go-between because it was not fun to talk directly with the agency.  Our consultant was the one who called me when we were in Oklahoma to tell me that the birth mom had changed her mind.  I continue to talk and/or email with her at least once a week.

This brings me to my recent project....completing an agency application.  This agency is one of their newer contacts.  We don't have to pay any agency or application fees, unless we are matched through them.  But we do have to fill out this neverending application form so that they will keep our profile on file.  

Edited to add:  If you have questions, please feel free to email me at waiting_and_waiting at ymail.com.  I know that some may not return to read comments if I answer that way. 

Next up:  working with a facilitator