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- What is Baby from Heaven Adoption
Facilitation Service? Baby
from Heaven Adoption Facilitation service was founded in 1998 by Terry Volk. Terry is a certified
open adoption practitioner and is bonded and fully insured as an
adoption facilitator. The organization was created to help build
families through open and closed adoption through advertising efforts.
Terry herself is an adoptive parent and began facilitating adoptions
for a nationwide organization in 1995. Her desire in founding Baby
from Heaven is to make adoption affordable for all individuals
who have the desire to love and build their family through adoption.
Baby from Heaven is not a licensed adoption agency; rather, it
serves to meet the needs of both the adoptive family and birth
family in the adoption process, providing education, guidance support,
networking, and prayer and adoption plan management to all parties.
- Does Baby from Heaven work with all adoptive
families? We do reserve our services for adoptive families who
are home study approved through one of our approved agencies and/or
attorneys. We have realized this past decade how important it is
to have a team of individuals who are compatible and available
24 hrs 7 days a week. If you have found our services via the internet
or through a referral, please call us to see if your agency or
attorney has a working relationship with us. We will consider each
family on a case-by-case basis.
- Is “Baby from Heaven” a
licensed agency? No. “Baby
from Heaven” is not a licensed adoption agency. It is engaged
solely in the business of adoption facilitation, as defined by the
State of California, Family Code, commencing with Chapter 1.5, section
8623. “Adoption Facilitators may advertise for the purpose
of soliciting parties to an adoption or locating children for an
adoption, and may act as an intermediary between the parties to
an adoption.”
- What types of children do you have available? Mostly newborn, and more recently toddlers, sibling groups, and
older children; Caucasian as well as other racial or mixed heritage.
- Can we specify the sex of the child? No.
We have found that ultrasounds can be wrong and adoptive families
are disappointed at the time of birth. In several cases we have
had the adoptive family reconsider their commitment and decide
against placement. We have found that birth mothers are responding
disapprovingly to gender preferences and say, “If the family
was blessed with a biological child they would not be given the
choice of gender”. We do not want
women to feel rejected because the child she is carrying is the “wrong
gender”. Most of our birth mothers do not know the gender
of their baby prior to choosing a family and ultrasounds are not
100% accurate. We encourage families interested in specific gender
to consider adoption of a child already born or international adoption.
- What will our birth mother be like? Well, I have
to admit, that in this day and age; there are more options available
to pregnant woman than adoption. Abortion is alive, with clinics
available nationwide at a low expense or accepting payment from
Medicaid. Carrying a child for nine months and then placing him/her
with another family is incredibly painful and the hardest decision
she will ever make. We have found that in order for a woman to
plan this and then to carry through with her commitment, she must
have some very motivating factors. Some examples of motivating
factors can include, but are not limited to, a strong conviction
that this child must have 2 parents, too young or financially unstable,
wants to complete school prior to raising a family, no family support
to assist in a parenting role, rape, she may be carrying for other
children and simply has no energy to care for another child.
- How long is the wait? There is not a waiting
period as we do not have a “waiting list”. As soon
as you are contracted and have provided us with your resumes you
will be presented to birth mothers. We have had families “matched” within
a few days to 1 year. On the “average” most adoptive
families are matched within 6-12months.
- Do we need a home study? Yes, Baby from Heaven
can recommend an organization in your area or direct you where
you can obtain one.
- What about background and medical information
on the birth mother? Baby
from Heaven will request a medical
release and social and health information. We will request and
assess each birth parent’s
willingness to be tested for drugs/HIV/sexually transmitted diseases
prior to birth when possible. We will request a photo of each birth
parent and any shared children, a copy of the birth mother’s
ID and confirmation from the clinic/OB/hospital, which confirmed
the positive pregnancy test. Upon your decision to work with the
birth mother, we would suggest that you follow with your agency
or attorney to secure medical information/documentation from the
doctor. If desired, you may request and obtain an HIV test on your
baby post delivery.
- What is open adoption? Open adoption can mean
many things, from meeting your birth mother that has seen your
profile, to continuing a telephone relationship during her pregnancy
or maintaining an on-going relationship post-placement. Most birth
mothers desire to be pro-active in their adoption plan by identifying
the prospective adoptive family and receiving photos and/or letters
a few times a year. This agreement will be identified early on
and we will work with you to assist you in this area. Baby from
Heaven supports openness among all members of the adoption triad,
i.e. birth parents, adoptive families and children, since it is
believed that such openness in most adoptions is in the best interest
of all parties, and has proven to result in safer adoptions with
less reclaims. Occasionally, a birth mother will not want any further
contact until the child is 18 years old. The choice is yours and
the birth parents.
- Can we reach you after hours and on the
weekends?
Baby from Heaven is unique in that we provide our contracted
families with a number of ways to contact us. We are available
via cell phones, pagers, E-mail, 24-hour answering service and
fax. We have established 800 telephone lines for our birth mothers
and are available for them 24 hour/7 days a week. This can be very
important if your birth mother goes into labor after hours.
- If I adopt a newborn, will the baby go
to foster care? No, usually within 24 hours to three days the baby will
be discharged from the hospital. In most cases, adoptive families
will bring the baby home directly from the hospital.
- What happens if after two years we still
have not been chosen? Unfortunately, we can not
guarantee you will be chosen by a birth parent. However, based
on my experience of over 1,100 successful placements, if all
parties are committed and eager to adopt, we are successful 99%
of the time. Occasionally, families have left the program due
to divorce, death, family problems, and other various emergencies.
Upon request, you may be entitled to a three (3) month freeze
period which will give you an opportunity to work through a difficult
time in your life. This option enables a family to take a break
from the adoption process while not using any of their contracted
time.
- What happens if the birth mother changes
her mind before or after placement? We have a low reclaim rate, but
if you should experience a failure, we would place you back on
active and work quickly to re-introduce you to birth mothers. Unlike
other services, our advertising services are good for two (2) years
or one (1) successful placement. You will not have to pay any additional
fees again to Baby from Heaven. Our goal is to build your family
through adoption.
- What about confidentiality? Baby
from Heaven will share with birth parents your first names and other non-identifying
information. You have the option of giving as much or as little
information to the birth mother you are matched with. We never
would disclose your income or where you work or live with birth
parents; this is left up to the adoptive family. Most families
feel very comfortable after meeting their birth mother and want
her to feel comfortable with the family that will parent her child.
Each state requires some information be given to the birth parents.
- Can you help us if we are already working
with another adoption professionals? Yes, in fact, agencies and
attorneys refer most of our adoptive families to us. Many of
our agencies and attorneys just don’t have the staff or time
to work 24 hrs 7 days a week screening birth parents. We also work
with attorneys that prefer to handle the legal work and not the
placing of ads & facilitation of an
adoption. We interface with these professionals on your behalf by
providing copies of the medical reports, medical & social histories & all
Support information we obtain during the building of our relationship.
- How do you provide adoptive family profiles
to your birth parents? Most women considering adoption
has preferences in the adoptive family she wants for her baby.
We do not pull the adoptive families based on the amount of time
you have been with our organization. We allow the birth mom the
honor of designing her own adoption plan and making all the decisions.
In working with the birth mom, we will begin asking the birth
mom to describe or visualize the kind of family she wants her
baby to be raised in. We will start that process by asking them
to consider 3 areas, which include ethnicity, religion and 1
or 2 parent homes. Once the basic vision of that family has been
decided, then we begin to discuss stay at home parents, childless
couple versus children already in the home, hobbies, interest,
values, type of relationship she wants with the family before
and after the baby is born and many other areas. We have had
some adoptive families chosen within a few days of retaining
us just because they had the character that the birth mom was
looking for.
- How many profiles do you send a birth
parent? We begin by sending her 3 or 4 adoptive
families. We ask our families to prepare a comprehensive “book” type
of profile for the prospective birth families. That profile will
include many different types of photographs that reflect their
true family including extended family, pets, neighborhoods, letters
of testimony from friends, Church and family and approximately
8-10 pages that address the birth parents personally. We will continue
that process in small increments until the birth parents have peace
of mind about the adoptive families. Once they make a first and
second choice, we will contact the adoptive families and set up
a telephone conference. Frequently our birth parents will desire
to meet the adoptive family one time prior to birth. We will assist
in the facilitation of that particular meeting.
- How frequently will we have contact with
A Baby from Heaven Adoptions? First of all, we
are always available to support you. We do primarily work with
woman who are facing an unplanned pregnancy and do spend approximately
90% of our day in this work. We only work with 10-12 adoptive
families at any given time so we can be totally committed to
supporting everyone. Typically we will be presenting your profile
a few times each month and you will be aware of this by telephone
or email. Many adoptive families prefer to have monthly updates
as each call brings them anxiety and they feel like the ups and
downs of the possibilities are just too much. As you retain us,
we will mutually discuss what the best type of contact from our
staff is.
- Do you only work with Christian adoptive
families? No. We work with adoptive
families and birth families of many different faiths. However,
our staff consists of women and men who are evangelical believers
and who faithfully pray for our organization.
- Do you accept payment plans? No, unfortunately
we do not. As we decide on future advertising needs, we are asked
by the yellow page directories to make yearly financial commitments.
- How much money does A Baby from Heaven
Adoptions commitment to advertising for birth parents? Our
annual budget exceeds $150,000. Every single dollar that is spent
on advertising which includes yellow page advertising, internet
advertising and web page advertising is for the purpose of targeting
women facing an unplanned pregnancy.
- Can A Baby from Heaven help us create
our adoption profile? Yes. We will provide you
with sample profiles and be happy to help you throughout the
process. It is our opinion, that this may be the single most
important step in building your family through adoption. As
we are working with birth parents, we have found that many
times a family will be chosen simply because of the text and
photographs an adoptive family has included in their profile.
We will provide you with additional information as you begin
this step.
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