Frequently Asked Questions
Why Transitions?
You’ll find useful information about our agency on our About Transitions page. Transitions Adoption Agency was founded in 2000 and has a longstanding reputation for being ethical and kind. We have deep seated community connections with various social workers and staff that have chosen to refer to Transitions Adoption Agency over and over because they trust us to treat their clients with dignity and love. We have both personal and professional experience with adoption that molds the way we operate. We are small by design, in order to be able to get to know our birth and adoptive families well. We want to be a resource not just during the adoption process, but well into the future. Family is the focus at Transitions, and that means we value our families and in turn yours as well. How can I make the adoption process easier? You’ll find one of the hardest things about the adoption process is putting your trust and control in the hands of someone else. Bringing a child into your family through adoption is a big commitment. You have very little control over the how, when, and where in adoptions. You can’t plan around it and yet it is such an important part of your life. You will have to learn to surrender control to your adoption agency, and trust that they have your best interest in mind. This is really difficult, but the more you are able to do this the easier your wait for a child will be. The other main person in control is the birth family.
How can I be sure that a birth family will choose me to parent their child?
Each of our adoptive families goes through a screening process, and training program during the home study. What you’ll find is we will be open and honest with you about obstacles you may face during the matching process. We will challenge you to be as flexible as possible so that you will have the best chance possible to be matched with a birth family. If there is something you are concerned about that you think would not make you a suitable candidate, we want you to talk with us about that. Ultimately, we’ve never had a family not be chosen that we accepted into our program. If there is something about your family that would not qualify you to adopt, you would be notified of that before you went active on the waiting list. There are also some birth families that wish for Transitions staff to choose the family for them. The other advantage of being a waiting family at Transitions is that you aren’t waiting with many other families, since we only work with a small number of families at one time. So, chances are your family dynamics are different than those of any other family waiting alongside you.
How long will my wait for a child be?
This is the most asked question, and yet one no one can provide a definite answer to. We would love to be able to place a baby with each family as soon as they are active on the waiting list. While that happens once in a great while, we have no control over when babies are born, and when a birth family will choose to place a child for adoption. We don’t want our families to have to wait indefinitely with no end in sight. For this reason, we have designed our program to be small. We do not take on more waiting adoptive families than we match in a typical year. On the flipside, we don’t have a limit on the number of birth mothers that we work with at one time and are always ready to assist someone interested in learning about adoption options. Most of our families wait less than one year, but there is of course no way for us to guarantee a wait time. Ultimately, we feel the right child comes along at the right time.
We are nervous about ongoing contact with a birth family, will you help us with that?
Research has shown that contact with birth families usually has a positive outcome for the adoptive child. In the United States it is estimated that about 90 percent of adoptions today are semi-open, 5% are completely closed, and 5% are completely open. Semi-open can mean many different things. Read our page on types of adoptions here. We are happy to fully inform you about types of adoption and we can walk you through step by step when the time comes for contact with a birth family. The most important thing to remember is there is no manual for adoption, and the both you and the birth family will learn as you go what is most comfortable for both of you. We require all our adoptive families be open to sending photos and a written update at least once per year. The level of openness beyond that is a matter of preference and we will never match an adoptive family with a birth family that is looking for more contact than an adoptive family is open to. The level of openness is one of the areas that is important in a match.