The adoption process can be confusing. There are so many moving parts, legal requirements, confusing emotions and complicated steps that it can begin to feel impossible.

That’s why it’s so important to know about the adoption services available to prospective birth parents. The process can feel overwhelming when you look at it all — but you’re not on your own. There are professionals that can provide services for mothers “giving a child up” for adoption.

This guide will give you all the information you need about child adoption services and where to find them as a prospective birth parent, including how to receive these adoption-related services at no cost.

Working with an Adoption Agency

When it comes to services for a mother “giving a child up” for adoption, your first and most important place to go is your adoption agency.

Adoption agencies are licensed organizations staffed by social workers, counselors, administrators and other professionals. Agencies provide the adoption services that prospective birth parents need in order to successfully (and legally) complete an adoption placement.

These child adoption services (which we will explore in greater detail below) include things like:

• 24/7 Support
• Case Management
• Matching Services
• Financial Assistance
• Counseling
• Contact Mediation
• Administrative Assistance
• Connection to Other Services
• And More

A good adoption agency is the central component of any successful adoption. When it comes to choosing an agency to provide your private adoption services, you have plenty of options.

One of the most important decisions you’ll need to make is whether to work with a local or national agency. Local agencies operate within a specific state or county. These agencies can offer more face-to-face contact with your caseworker. However, this also comes with longer wait times, smaller staff sizes and social workers handling too many cases at once.

For these reasons, many prospective birth mothers choose to work with a national adoption agency. These agencies provide private adoption services to prospective birth parents across the country. With larger staffs, they have more experience, shorter wait times and more established programs, like adoption financial assistance.

If you’d like to learn more about receiving important adoption services from a national adoption agency, consider contacting one of the organizations listed below:

• American Adoptions
• Gladney Center for Adoptions
• Beacon House Adoption Services

Adoption Services Provided By Agencies

We already touched on this briefly above, but it’s worth taking more time to understand a few of the most important adoption services provided by agencies.

These services are often the most important form of support a prospective birth parent will receive throughout the process. Without an agency’s adoption services, the process can be much more challenging and at a much higher risk of failing.

Case Management: Every step of the adoption process has requirements that must be met in order for the placement to be successfully completed. Things have to be done in a certain way; forms have to be filed by the right deadline. Through case management adoption services, your agency will make sure that nothing falls through the cracks.

Finding an Adoption Match: When you’re the prospective birth parent, you get to choose the adoptive family for your baby. This happens by looking through adoptive family profiles, which the agency sends to you from its pool of adoptive parents. Some agencies create better profiles and work with more families than other agencies, which is another benefit of working with a larger, national adoption agency.

Financial Assistance: Adoption and adoption-related services are almost always free to prospective birth parents because of adoption financial assistance. Most pregnancy-related and cost-of-living expenses can be covered by this assistance. In order to get the most assistance, you need to work with a great adoption agency.

Other Important Adoption-Related Services

When you’re a prospective birth parent, the agency isn’t the only professional that provides adoption-related services during the process. There are doctors, attorneys, counselors, court administrators and more.

Before getting into the details of these other child adoption services, it’s important that you know, as a prospective birth parent, that adoption is always free to you. Normally, services like this would cost money. But when you’re a prospective birth parent, these costs are almost always covered by adoption financial assistance.

Now, with that in mind, here are several of the adoption-related services that you will need during your process:

Medical Care: One of your most important jobs during the adoption process is to take care of yourself. This means staying on top of prenatal appointments, creating a hospital plan and making otherwise healthy lifestyle choices for your pregnancy. The medical care you receive is an important adoption-related service. The costs of medical care will be covered by adoption financial assistance, and your agency can help you create a hospital plan for labor and delivery.

Legal Representation: The adoption process is governed by state law, which means that you will need to find legal adoption services. If you already have an adoption agency, they can connect you with a trustworthy attorney and facilitate the adoption financial assistance to cover any legal fees.

Emotional Counseling: The challenging emotions associated with placing a child for adoption can be difficult to cope with on your own. Speaking with a counselor before, during and after the process is advised. This adoption-related service has helped many prospective birth parents feel encouraged by adoption and hopeful about the future.

Contact Mediation: Did you know that the vast majority of adoptions today are at least semi-open? In a semi-open adoption, you have ongoing contact with the adoptive family, but a third party (usually the adoption agency) mediates this contact so that every still keeps their privacy intact. Private adoption services like this can continue for years after placement.

Find Adoption Services Near You

There are adoption agencies, attorneys and social workers all across the country. To find adoption services in your area, you can check out our guides to adoption in each state.

Or, if all of this information is a bit overwhelming, you can simply contact us today to be connected (for no charge) with an adoption agency. This agency will be able to answer your question, and you’re never obligated to choose adoption.