I've spent a long time looking at agencies online, and I thought that I had a decent list of potential agencies. Based on what they'd posted on their websites. I am learning the hard way that it is a lot more difficult to choose an agency than I thought it would be. Hubby is interested in hearing what I learn from conversations with agencies, but at this point, he doesn't want to mess with it himself. That's how it works in our marriage - out of an entire universe of possible choices, I narrow it down to a few, perhaps three or four, and Hubby works with me to choose between those.
I'm taking a very critical look at just about everything about an agency, because let's face it - these are people we're counting on to get our child safely to us and get us all home with all the i's dotted and t's crossed in our mountain of paperwork. I've been very upfront with the agency staff I've spoken to and explained that we aren't planning to start the paperwork until early next year, but that we want to take our time and make sure we're chosing the right country program and right agency for our family. If they're dismissive of us because we aren't willing to fill out paperwork and start today, they're off the list.
We've decided that we definitely want a multi-country agency, and it needs to have a solid China program as well as a good program in Japan, Vietnam, Thailand, Taiwan, or any combination of the above. If we decide to go with Korea, we are limited to just three agencies, all of whom have programs in China and Vietnam as well. Honestly though, none of those three agencies are at the top of my list right now, so we'd likely only use them if we choose Korea.
Last week we were scheduled to participate in a conference call with a multi-country agency here in our state. It was about their China program. Now, I don't know if this is indicative of the dwindling interest in Chinese adoption due to long wait times and increased restrictions on who may adopt, or if this is indicative of an agency that doesn't know that you NEVER schedule something during the season finale of Grey's Anatomy... but Hubby and I were the only people on the call. Well, actually, Hubby spent a lot of time chasing M. around the house, so really I was the only one on the call with the agency staff the whole time. It was a really strange call. One of the agency people had a bad New Jersey accent, which is not something you hear often in our neck of the woods. She seemed more interested in telling me how great the shopping is in China and how CHEAP (she emphasized that word repeatedly) everything is over there than in actually talking about the future of the program. Um, okay. They also dodged several of my questions instead of giving straight answers. I'd say it was totally a waste of my time, but at least it showed us that we don't want to use this agency.
Tonight we're scheduled to participate in an online teleconference. At least, I think we're scheduled. I followed all the instructions on this agency's website to sign up for their event, and then received an email late last night telling me that due to some technical glitch, we were actually signed up for an event this December, and could we please go back to the site and re-register? I went back this morning, couldn't figure out how to re-register and finally gave up and emailed the agency. IF I can get us re-registered for this seminar, we'll participate. I'm willing to give this agency the benefit of the doubt - technical glitches happen to all of us at one time or another - but in the back of my mind, I'm thinking, "if they can't get their online system to work here in the US, how will they handle problems while we're traveling in Vietnam or China?" On the plus side, they do have a remote staff person who lives a few miles from us and whose children attended the same elementary school M. is going to attend. So even though the agency's main office is in another state, they do have a person nearby we can talk to, meet in person, etc.
About two weeks ago, we talked to an agency recommended by good friends of ours. They used the agency several years ago for a Russian adoption and were very happy with the level of service provided. I spoke to someone in their China office, and I was very impressed with how much they stressed attachment and bonding techniques and possible issues. They seemed very big on educating adoptive parents about how your baby may react in the first few weeks or months and how those behaviors differ from what your own biological children were doing at that same age. They followed up later, inviting us to an orientation meeting in our city, but schedule-wise, we couldn't make it work. While the graphics snob in me wasn't overly impressed the visual impact of their materials, the actual content was very good. We do plan to eventually attend a meeting with this agency, and they are currently at or near the top of our list.
More to come later!