Adoption—The Connections Way

The most common statement we hear from prospective adoptive families is, “Now that we’ve decided to adopt, we don’t want to wait!”

If you’ve ever said that or thought that to yourself, Connections Adoption Services, Inc., is the right place for you.

For one thing, Connections has a basic philosophy that is very different from other adoption agencies. Traditional adoption agencies focus on acquiring a pool of waiting adoptive families and primarily provide services to those families. While Connections also provides these same services (home studies, home certifications, parenting classes, post placement reports, etc.), our primary focus is on attracting birthparents. We have a number of websites geared completely towards birthparents, and we spend a lot of money with internet search engines so that one of those websites will come up near the top every time someone makes a search. More birthparents contacting our agency means more babies available for adoption, which means shorter waiting times for adoptive families. In the end, this means that our focus on birthparents turns out to be in the best interest of adoptive families.

Connections also recognizes that when birthparents are ready to plan an adoption, they don’t want to wait either. A priority for birthparents is to find the right adoptive family for their baby. So we work with birthparents to match them quickly. What this means for adoptive families is that when you are called and told that you have been chosen by a birthmother, we will give you all the information we have on the situation, and then we will expect you to respond quickly and let us know if you want to move forward with a match.

Here is an outline of what to expect with a Connections adoption:

Fill out an application, sign one of our Stork Search contracts, and pay the application fee.
Either provide Connections with a profile, or with pictures and a Dear Birthparent letter so that we can create a profile for you.
Connections will put your profile on our birthparent websites (if you are comfortable with that). We will also send your profile out to birthparents, according to the guidelines you have given us (regarding race, gender, medical and mental health issues, etc.). At this point, we would like to have all your contact numbers so that we may be able to reach you quickly when a situation arises. This is why it is important to be as clear as possible in your own mind regarding what you are looking for in a match—and that you communicate that clearly with Connections.
Once you are chosen by birthparents, we will send you (preferably by fax) all the information we have on the situation. Usually this will be a birthparent application, estimated costs for the match, and either a proof of pregnancy or prenatal records. Sometimes we may also have pictures of the birthparents to share. We will ask you to get back to us by the beginning of the next day so that we can either move forward with the match or have the birthparents chose another family. You will need to make your decision based on the information we have on hand.
If you decide to move forward, the next step will be a conference call. Someone from Connections will stay on the phone and assist you and the birthparents in a first conversation. These conversations usually last between 30 minutes to an hour. Again, we will ask you to get back to us by the next day and let us know if you wish to proceed with the match.
If both the birthparents and adoptive family would like to move forward, a contract will be sent out to the adoptive family that day by express mail and the signed and notarized contract and all fees will need to be back at Connections within a week. In some cases, where the birthmother expenses are high and/or it is early in the pregnancy, we do arrange a payment plan, but this is the exception rather than the rule.
You are now on your way to enlarging your family! We will be with you the whole way, providing information, direction and professional support. We ask that you trust us – and send us pictures of your little one after the birth!

“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” (Maya Angelou)