The first meeting at the adoption agency

Let me go though each phase that we went through in more detail.

The initial meeting between us and the adoption agency.

We drove through to the adoption agency full of anticipation and tingles. We were met by a social worker who deals with adoptive parents. We sat down in a little lounge and the social worker told us all about the process & the costs.  It is worth noting that at that stage (2004), the cost of adoption through a private agency was around R 16 000 - the same price as one IVF treatment.  I believe that the cost of adopting through a government organisation like Child Welfare was around R 4000 at that time. These costs are mostly legal fees but in the case of a private agency, the biological mother gets a lot of personal attention. I’ll come back to that later.  The adoption agency that we went to is really divided into 2 departments; 1) the social workers for the biological family 2) the social workers for the adoptive family.  These 2 departments meet regularly to discuss their clients and try to make matches.  We were asked whether we wanted a closed or an open adoption.  We had no clue what either of these meant! Closed adoption is where there is no contact at all between the adoptive and biological families.  After the baby is born, it is taken to a Kangaroo mother and the adoptive parents collect the baby from her.  The Kangaroo mother is used partly as a go-between and partly as a time-user.  Sometimes, the social worker feels that the biological mom might change her mind after the baby is born.  If they do feel that this might be the case, the Kangaroo mother keeps the baby for as long as the biological mom is unsure.  Only when she has totally made up her mind, do the adoptive parents get the call to say they have a baby.  This is why quite often; babies are adopted at 2 or 3 weeks old or even 2 or 3 months old. 

An open adoption is where the two families meet at the "hand-over'.  There is an opportunity to meet & talk with each other so that there is some peace-of-mind for both parties.  It eliminates the element of "I wonder what they're like and I wonder what they look like" for both parties.

There are advantages to both and disadvantages to both.  We were told that nowadays, 75% of biological mothers ask for an open adoption and we would have a bigger choice of babies if we went this route. 

 

The initial meeting lasted around 2 hours and was really just for us to be informed on the policies, procedures and general information regarding adoption. The social worker asked us quite a few questions about our infertility, our relationship and the type of baby we saw ourselves raising. (Colour, sex, age, medical status etc)

She gave us an enormous stack of forms and advised us to go home, read through them and then decide if we wanted to go ahead. If we did, we would need to complete the forms and submit them together with certain letters and a portfolio.