I started researching the possibility of adopting from China back in July 2007. I soon figured out that the wait for a non-special needs (NSN) infant from China would be well over 3 years. In fact, I'm expecting the wait will probably be about 5+ years for people filing now. Since my husband is Chinese-American, he really wanted to adopt from China and did not want to consider another country. I, however, did not want to wait 5 years for my first child! Initially I had thought that we could be expedited for Chinese adoption due to my husband's ethnicity, but since his father was born in Vietnam (even though he is ethnically Chinese), the CCAI will not consider us for an expedited adoption.With some more research I thought that a concurrent adoption might suit our needs, allowing us to eventually adopt from China, but also to adopt another baby in a shorter time span. Eventually, I was drawn to Kazakhstan. The process of adopting from Kazakhstan is a bit more difficult than adopting from some other countries because perspective adoptive parents (PAPs) have to spend weeks and months in Kazakhstan to adopt a child, but the difficulty of the process makes the demand for children from Kazakhstan less, therefore greatly decreasing the wait times. Also, the majority of the babies available for adoption in Kazakhstan are Asian or Eurasian, which appealed to my husband since he wants our babies to look like us.
Next came the decision on which agencies to use for our concurrent adoptions. It was very easy for me to decide to use China Adoption with Love (CAWLI) based in Brookline, Massachusetts for our China adoption. The reviews for CAWLI on the Yahoo Chat Groups were all positive. My husband and I scheduled an appointment to meet with the director in Boston and we thought she (Lillian) and her staff were great (and patient). CAWLI is a lot cheaper than many agencies and does a lot more of the footwork for its clients, including notarizing and apostilling documents and arranging travel to China without marking up the travel costs. CAWLI also sends a doctor from the U.S. with each of its groups of PAPs that travel to China. Finally, CAWLI was fine with us doing a concurrent adoption as long as there was at least a year between our adoptions. I found this all very reassuring and so far am very happy with CAWLI and email frequently with their documentation representative, Meg, about which documents they require and the best way to obtain them.
I was a little bit more confused by which agency to use for adoption from Kazakhstan. Whereas the China adoption process seems older and more established, one gets the feeling that adopting from Kazakhstan can pose many surprises and that the way those surprises are handled by the authorities while PAPs are in Kazakhstan can be very unpredictable. The top two agencies I learned about were World Partners Adoption (WPA), based in Georgia, and Little Miracles (LMI), based in Texas. I also looked in to Journey Home Adoption (JHA) that was started by some ex-WPA clients a few years ago.
WPA impressed me right away when a day after I emailed them for information Lisa Kaforey, an adoption coordinator based in upstate New York called me to ask me if I had any questions. Lisa continued to respond promptly to emails. WPA even agreed to send me their contract ahead of time so that I could go through it and make sure that there was nothing I felt uncomfortable with before actually sending in the application and the $300 application fee. Little Miracles never contacted me after they emailed me their info packet. Additionally, a few days later when I sent them a list of 25 questions LMI never responded to my email. It's been months now, and they never wrote back to me. Lisa from WPA responded within 1 day. So LMI was off my list.
My reservation about WPA was the fact that I saw some mixed reviews about them on the Yahoo Chat Groups. I know that no one agency can please all people and that international adoption is risky, so there will always be some people that are not happy with the experience. Still, I had a nagging doubt about WPA. When Lisa sent me a list of about 100 references from WPA, I emailed every single person on the list. Most everyone got back to me. Most were 100% happy. Some were pretty happy and one person responded that she was surprised that she was still on WPA's list since she had ended up using JHA for her second adoption and WPA had removed her from their Internet group list. It seems if WPA is unhappy with a client (or vice versa) they are quickly removed from the WPA group. I also talked to some WPA clients who had some problems while in Kazakhstan that they thought were not handled in the most customer-friendly manner.
So, with nagging doubts I contacted JHA. JHA was started by some women who used WPA in the past and were not completely satisfied with their experience. JHA uses the same team of professionals in Kazakhstan that WPA uses. It is this team of seasoned Kazakh professionals that differentiates WPA (and JHA) from other agencies that perform adoptions in Kazakhstan and is the reason that the Kazakhstan embassy Website in New York City lists WPA as the agency to use for Kazak adoptions.
Upon contacting JHA I liked Coleen Belli immediately and liked the fact JHA wants to create a warmer, more personalized experience for their clients than they experienced while they were with WPA. A few things made me feel uncomfortable with JHA, however. The first thing was that although JHA has only had a few clients, Coleen did not put me in touch with all of them to get references. I felt like she was being vague about the number of clients and then I think she put me in touch with about 4 or so of them when there supposedly is a total of about 14 clients. Also, I did not like being put in touch with JHA's "ambassadors" who are people who have adopted with WPA not JHA, but essentially can talk to you about their Kaz experience since JHA and WPA use the same Kaz-based team, the sisters. Much of JHAs marketing materials were based on references from the ambassadors. I know that JHA is a new agency, but I would rather see a reference from a true client of JHA and not a reference from someone who used WPA in the past but spoke only of their experience in Kazakhstan. Finally, I read JHA's contract and it was exactly the same as WPA's but with a few more restrictive clauses.
A few days after reading the JHA contract I decided to go with WPA. So far I am very happy and have had a very good experience with Lisa Kaforey and with the owner, Jim Harding, whom I contacted about the terms of the contract. My thoughts are that I would rather go with an agency with a long history of doing Kazakhstan adoptions, than with a new agency that is just starting out, even though they use the same team in Kazakhstan. For my first adoption I want to go with a seasoned team that has experienced all of the pitfalls and loopholes while dealing with adoptions in Kazakhstan. Hopefully my "gut feeling" about WPA has served me well.
So now I am busy gathering paperwork for our home study agency, Jewish Child Care Agency (JCCA), based in New York City where we live, and for CAWLI and WPA. It certainly is a bit confusing and would probably be very difficult for someone who is not very good at juggling multiple balls, but so far, I have found the challenge very invigorating and interesting. I will write more in future posts about the different requirements and how to avoid some pitfalls during the "paperchase."
