The Key To Any Good Relationship

The Prospective Adoptive Parent – Adoption Agency relationship is an odd mix of personal and professional. It starts out the way most relationships do – both parties putting on their best faces, wooing one another. Agencies send out glossy brochures with photos of adorable tiny babies. They cheerfully return phone calls and emails quickly. PAP’s are careful with their words, so as not to offend or make a bad impression. For the Prospective Adoptive Parent, there’s a sense of idealism, believing they have found the perfect mate for this momentious life event. And as in many new relationships, PAP’s are often reluctant to listen to anything negative about their new Agency; they may also be reluctant to bring up any issues or concerns for fear of damaging the “perfect” relationship they have formed. 

Unfortunately, too often there is a crisis point in the relationship – a breakdown in communication. PAP’s have expectations that aren’t met or Agencies give information that is misleading or inaccurate. And the result is frustration, anger, hurt feelings.. and sometimes worse. How can this crisis be averted? The simple answer: Communicate. But how?

1. Know your expectations. As a PAP, take a moment and step back. Make a list of all the things you expect from your agency.

  • How often do you expect your agency to call or email to check in?
  • How long do you expect a response to take?
  • Are you expecting your agency contact person to treat you as a friend?
  • How much information are you expecting your agency to provide?
      Do you want detailed timelines?
      Do you want to know all possible outcomes, at each step in the process?
      Do you want to know every single benchmark, even the ones that are incidental or will not affect your timeline?
      Do you want to know the names of every person at your agency who is involved in your case?
      Do you want to know if there are issues with the provincial authorities or others involved in your child’s case?
      What if there are problems – do you expect to be told what the plan will be to resolve those issues?
      What level of detail do you expect from a referral?
      How often do you expect updates on your child after the referral while waiting to travel?
      How much information do you hope to have on your child’s birthfamily?
      How much information do you want about your child’s care situation?
  • What do you expect from the in-country staff?
      Do you expect to be met at the airport?
      Do you expect your agency to book your hotels?
      Arrange your transportation?
      Schedule your tourist excursions?
      Provide an on-call doctor?
      Do you expect agency staff to accompany you on all adoption-related appointments?
      Do you expect to be able to contact agency staff any time, day or night?
      Do you expect agency staff to be able to rearrange schedules or fast track appointments in order to fit your flight reservations?
      Do you expect the in-country staff to be upfront and honest with you regarding all details of your child’s paperwork and adoption circumstances?
  • Everyone has expectations – most are reasonable; some are imperative in order to ensure an ethical adoption process; some are simply not realistic. Regardless, it is important to know your expectations – and compare those to what your agency is willing or able to provide. Even the best agency will not meet our every expectation. There are realities in international adoption that PAP’s need to accept and understand. Working with a foreign country means not everything will be under our control and people need to be flexible, to some extent. In every situation it is much more important for your agency to act professionally and ethically than it is for them to be your best friend. At the same time, agencies need to make a greater effort to clearly communicate with their clients. PAPs often don’t know the right questions to ask – sometimes they don’t even know they are missing information. Whenever possible, it behooves agencies to be upfront and honest and to provide all available information.

    Never, under any circumstance, should a Prospective Adoptive Parent be afraid to ask questions. PAP’s have contracted with an agency to provide a service – to facilitate the adoption of a child. They have paid a significant amount in fees for this service. They have a right to expect the agency will treat them in a professional, courteous manner at all times. PAP’s have to ask questions – in order to gain information, to clarify what they’ve been told, or if they have concerns. And if the agency’s answer is not satisfactory, ask again – or ask for more detail. Clearly there will be times when an agency does not have all the answers or information a PAP desires – but a PAP should never feel brushed off or dismissed when a simple answer could suffice.  Adoption is a complicated, emotional experience and it is only natural that questions will arise during the process. 

    Communication – it’s the key to any good PAP-Agency relationship.

    Share your thoughts in the comments…
    What do you wish you had asked your agency?
    In what areas is your agency especially good at communicating?
    Are there areas where they lack communication?
    Do you have expectations that your agency is not meeting?

    Chosing An Agency-The Process

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    9 Responses

    1. Christina,
      This is an excellent topic! I wish we’d read something like this before we ever started our first adoption, because adoption is one of those things (the first time around anyway) where you don’t know what questions you need to ask until you need to ask them. By the time you realize you need to aske the questions you may have already gotten yourself into something less than ideal. That is what happened to us with our first adoption. Never in a million years did we suspect that our agency would stop communicating with us once they had our money, but they did.

      This time around we have been quite happy with the new agency’s level of communication. Waiting for as long as we have been, there were long stretches where they really had nothing specific they could tell us, but, even though the generic communication sometimes seemed like just “Blah, blah, blah,” I still appreciate the fact that they are keeping in regular contact with all of the waiting families. Also, as soon as they had information that might pertain to us, they let us know. They have been communicating what is going on with our specific case on a regular basis ever since. I really appreciate this, as it makes it easier for me to wait if I know why I am waiting.

    2. Our agency is great at communciating–always gets back to me asap, spends lots of time on the phone answering my questions, and provides a monthy update newsletter. Unforunately the news is always bad! It’s almost like I’d rather not know. Seriously, I’m glad I do. But for once I wish the news wasn’t “another official isn’t signing off on this paperwork” or “new regulations are slowing things down” or “we thought we’d be signed with this new province by now but it’s taking longer.”

    3. This is a great topic. Communication is so important, as are healthy and reasonable expectations. I went from one poorly communicating agency to another and I really wish I had read something like this back then because I really needed an agency that would communicate reliably and truthfully and I had warning signs from the get-go that this would not be the case with both agencies but I still went forward. In the end I began feeling like my reasonable expectations were impossible to satisfy but now I know that there are agencies who really excel in this area.

      And like Heidi said, be careful what you wish for. Know that with good communication comes the good, the bad AND the ugly. It can’t and won’t be good all of the time, that just isn’t reality!

    4. I love, love, love your site! This is THE BEST resource I’ve come across in a while. My husband and I are waiting for approval from our agency, and then we’re about ready to send off the dossier to Vietnam, so we’re right in the middle of all the craziness. The things you said about expectations and feelings hit the nail on the head. My agency has been great thus far… maybe not giving us all the info we want (b/c they don’t have it)… but that’s probably a good thing. They really try not to get our hopes up about dates or specifics. This can be frustrating, but in the long run is probably best for our emotional well being. And I do feel lucky to have found such an ethical agency so close to home.
      Thank you for posting this information. It makes me feel a little less lost in this whole process. Keep up the good work!

    5. Great topic! (how come you can always think of such great things to write about and my mind is always stuck in writer’s block mode????)

      Our first adoption we had a we’ll-tell-you-anything-to-keep-you-happy agency. Everything was sugar coated, but I never had a feeling of full confidence. I never felt they truly, 100% knew what was happening at any given time.

      This time around we dealt with a more no-nonsense agency. They were super friendly, but just stated facts…even if it was what we didn’t want to hear. They told us the most likely and worst case scenarios for all stages. And even though I HATED hearing it…they were spot on with their expectations of how things processed and I am very thankfully they didn’t blow any sunshine up our you-know-whats.

      Unfortunately, like many things in life, hindsight is 20/20 in adoption. Even the second time around, when I had already been there, done that, I forgot to ask important questions. I agree agencies need to recognize that PAP’s don’t always ask the right questions and they (the agencies) need to be more proactive to educate.

      All PAP’s need to ask questions. All questions. Any questions. And, yes, even the hard questions.

    6. Our agency is really good about communicating. Our questions are almost always answered quicly and we get a weekly update, regarding referrals, travel dates, etc. This is our first child and first adopion, so I really appreciate it. They also put out monthly newsletters on the web, a quarterly newsletter in the mail, and keep up a blog, as well as individual branches keep up their webpages on goings on in the community. They really go out of their way to service their clients and make them feel like family.

    7. So, our agency was great in the beginning…now that they have our money and our dossier is in their hands, I can’t get them to return a single mail or phone call. Do I just give up on them and assume they’ll let me know what I need to know when I need to know it?? What is the appropriate response? I have been considering writing the a letter expressing some of the views expressed here, and my concerns. Is that realistic??

    8. Danesha,
      If you are in that waiting for a referral phase where there really isn’t any news for your agency to share, I’d think it would be reasonable to hear from your agency once a month or even just once a quarter (depending on the wait list). However, if you have called or emailed them and they haven’t replied – that is a problem, in my eyes. A good agency will have a policy that calls and emails will be always returned within 1-2 business days. In that case, I would probably go up the chain of command to the manager or owner (depending on the size of the agency) and explain that you have been frustrated by unreturned phone calls etc. And then ask them how often you should expect to hear from them. Hopefully that will be enough to get their attention. But if not, you can always escalate it to a formal complaint letter… or even CC the board of directors. A good business knows it’s important to keep the clients happy. Obviously they can’t spend all day on the phone chatting with waiting families but they owe you the courtesy of a response, and of keeping you periodically updated on the status of your case. (and if after all of that, you still can’t get anyone to call or email back, I’d find a new agency)

    9. I almost wish we could choose an agency after the adoption. I mean, I know that isn’t at all possible in any sense, but in reality, that is when we will have the most knowledge about what we need and expect.
      There are so many important things that you learn after the fact. There are a lot of things that PAPs need to ask in the community, of the agencies they are considering, and of themselves. This was a great question list.

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