What Is An Adoption Facilitator
and What is Their Purpose?

An adoption facilitator will arrange to match adoptive parents with the birth parents, however they are not licensed as an adoption agency or attorney.

For this reason, if you were to hire a facilitator over an agency or attorney you would very well be risking a lot. It could result in money loss, getting a broken heart because the placement of the child is disrupted, or discovering that the adoption cannot be completed because some requirement or document has been overlooked or not correctly done.

You can however opt to just hire a lawyer and coordinate with the adoption facilitator from your country and the country which your new child is being adopted from.

How to Locate an Effective Adoption Facilitator

Regardless of where you adopt your child from, the process can be very tedious and international adoptions will be even more stressful and exhilarating. So if you choose to hire a facilitator take care to follow these important tips to locate a good one.

1. Be sure that they are reputable by conducting some extensive research about them. Adoption facilitators treat the process as a pure business transaction and you will be asked to pay some fees and other charges like documentation payments, phone bills and special miscellaneous fees. Shop and compare to make sure that the agency is not just focused on making money.

2. When you are personally asking for services to be rendered, ask if you will have to cover for basic expenses like phone bills, hotel accommodations of personnel to the host country and the like. You might be surprised that your bill payable to them might be quite hefty.

3. Ask to see the facilitators credentials, the firm must be recognized and accredited by the state and the national government. Only a hand full of states have legally authorized adoption facilitators to charge for their participation in adoption matching.

In other states, either a facilitator is not allowed to conduct their business or they are prohibited from charging a fee for their services. In this case, all fees and expenses are subject to review and approval of the court.

4. Any facilitator who lies is not trustworthy. Don't entrust the procedure to them. For example, if they boast that all 400 adoption processes they completed where a success, well, that would be a pretty obvious lie; no one is perfect, right. It would be best to find another one.

5. Ask experts for their opinions. If you are experiencing medical issues, you usually ask for a second opinion regarding your illness. Do the same in this case to see if the facilitator is reliable and trustworthy.

You should also ask them about their connections to the country where you are adopting your child from.

A facilitator can only be effective if you are patient and cooperative.

** Keep in mind that, if a person is not a licensed attorney or agency, then it is illegal for them to receive payment for their services. Using them can cause you a nightmare of problems.

Return from Adoption Facilitator to Adoption Agencies

Return from Adoption Facilitator to Children for Adoption