Shelia Davis and her wonderful husband are the adoptive parents of three children through domestic private infant adoption. Their youngest child was diagnosed with autism when he began missing milestones. They have had to learn many new parenting techniques to help their son. Shelia is the founder of Heaven Sent Adoption Services, Inc. She strives to help women with unplanned pregnancies make informed decisions about parenting or placing their babies. She encourages all of her potential adoptive parents to research and engage in open loving adoptions. She notes that, “Adoption is very personal to me as I am the sister of two brothers through adoption, the mother of three children through adoption, a friend to three birth parents through adoption, a child of God through adoption and a director of a licensed adoption agency.”

In response to a heated discussion that included this question: "Is a referral service basically a consultant, sort of like a wedding planner? My understanding is that facilitators are illegal in some states, like Florida. "

Shelia writes the following: First off - it is just a "title" as to what they call themselves and I don't think the words matter at all....it's the way they work, their ethics, the money they charge and who oversees their practice's that are more important.

There are both good and bad Facilitators and Referral Services -

1. They are both small businesses having ONLY a business licenses and not overseen by the courts or the government like a child placing agency or attorney is.

2. They can charge whatever they like because they are not accountable to a court system for their revenues like an agency or attorney is.

3. They are not required to have trained social workers or counselors to provide services to you or the Expectant mothers.

Linda Lach is an experienced adoption lawyer in Hawaii. She frequently shares her experience to help others in their adoption journey. She recently responded to the question, “My husband and I are very interested in adoption, but we are at the very beginning of our journey. Do we place with an agency or go with private adoption? Is there certain criteria to be able to
adopt?” on the adoptionscams.com yahoo blog. She has given us permission to reprint her response here. Linda also works with surrogacy and guardianship occasionally. Domestic independent adoption has been a major part of her life since 1984. While she is licensed in Hawaii, she gladly provides services to birthmothers and adoptive parents located in other states.

Continued from Guest Blog: How to Get Started - Part 3

12) Oh, the other question: But won't she come back later and want the baby back? How many ways can I say no? No. When you have a correctly handled legal adoption, this is not an issue. You will have the degree of openness you want (or don't want), as agreed to, and I can honestly say that in nearly 1000 adoptions I have handled, unwanted contact has never been an issue. On the contrary, many AP's would like contact from the moms, but they have lost touch.

Kas is an international adoption consultant and counselor, mother to son from Russia, adopted at 18 months-now 5. She specifically asked for Caucasian, blue-green eyed, fair, blonde boy as young as possible with only minor & correctable health issues. She met her son at 13 months, and the rest is history. Kas says this is a wonderful way to adopt children! She advocates for Russian adoption daily, indicating that current cost are around $35-$40K, which is similar to some domestic adoptions and use of surrogate mothers. This is her story of being scammed by an International agency, which got her started helping others.

I was scammed post-adoption by a very popular intternational agency by being too honest in my post-placement reports. The agency had been sued and a doctor was a key witness against them who happened to be the doctor who treated my son. He was an expert in his field and I didn't know about the lawsuits until after the evaluation with him. I put his name on my final post-placement report as my son's doctor and that was it. The application I had in for adoption #2 was "deleted" with no refund. The agency refused to speak to me except once by their social worker who said that if my son was so bad off that he needed THAT doctor-I must not be able to handle another one and they would not facilitate it. They refuse to speak to me to this day. I'd love to say their name but I haven't yet. I was told they had been sued 10 times and lost every case for the same offense, not ensuring that the overseas paperwork was translated correctly, mainly the medicals of the adopted children. This was the case for me, too, but I didn't sue them.

Linda Lach is an experienced adoption lawyer in Hawaii. She frequently shares her experience to help others in their adoption journey. She recently responded to the question, “My husband and I are very interested in adoption, but we are at the very beginning of our journey. Do we place with an agency or go with private adoption? Is there certain criteria to be able to adopt?” on the adoptionscams.com yahoo blog. She has given us permission to reprint her response here. Linda also works with surrogacy and guardianship occasionally. Domestic independent adoption has been a major part of her life since 1984. While she is licensed in Hawaii, she gladly provides services to birthmothers and adoptive parents located in other states.

At first, the information available about adoption can seem overwhelming. In the "old days,” potential adoptive parents would talk to a friend, neighbor, or fellow church member in hopes of finding out "how to." Now, the Internet has changed the landscape - information overload isn't too strong a term to use. I'll try to simplify things a bit.

May I suggest that you go to your local bookstore, library, fire up your Kindle, or go to Amazon.com or BarnesandNoble.com online, and look at books on adoption. There are so many of them now, and after reading a few, you'll have a much better idea about how one can go about it. I don't suggest that you follow any one of them as you would follow a cookbook. In my honest opinion, none of them are perfect. But each will have something to offer.

In the mean time, here is my free lesson on how to adopt, including the following disclaimer. (Keep in mind that this is a free summarized version and therefore cannot cover everything. Also, each adoption has some unique aspects that need to be addressed by an adoption professional. This is for informational purposes and is not legal advice.)

1) Despite all the stuff out there, believe it or not, there are only two, count 'em, two, ways to adopt: through an agency, or independently. Social Services/Child Protective Services ("CPS"), or whatever it is called in your state, is an agency for this discussion. So is the County or the State.

2) This is the same whether you are adopting domestically or internationally, although almost ALL international adoptions are through agencies. There are a few exceptions to this, but not enough to warrant discussion.