How to Find Trustworthy and Reliable Reviews of Adoption Agencies
When searching for adoption agency reviews, knowing how to find trustworthy feedback and ratings is crucial.
- Keeping a perspective is important.
- Be on the lookout for negativity bias — people with bad experiences are often more motivated to leave reviews.
- Birth parents may be less likely to leave reviews of adoption agencies.
The information in this article will help you better understand where to find reliable adoption agency reviews and how to know you’re reading trustworthy information. You can also connect with a professional to get more information by filling out our free online contact form.
So, how do you find reviews of adoption agencies that include helpful information for choosing an agency?
Keeping Perspective When Reading Adoption Agency Ratings and Reviews
As you likely know, people receiving a service tend to either be completely satisfied with their experience or completely unsatisfied.
Because adoption is deeply personal, the reviews you read may not focus on the actual experience and services provided.
Finding objective adoption agencies reviews can be complicated, and it’s crucial that you understand how some birth mothers and adoptive parents use the internet to vent and how to tell that the information you’re reading is real.
So, let’s explore 6 helpful tips when searching for and reading reviews of adoption agencies.
1. The Internet is a Forum for Venting
In general, the internet is often used to vent. People are generally more motivated to post negative reviews and vent frustration. Adoption is emotional, leading to birth mothers and adoptive families posting emotionally charged reviews of adoption agencies.
Typically, birth mothers and adoptive families who had an overwhelmingly positive experience move on in life and don’t take the time to leave a review.
Large adoption agencies that help hundreds of birth mothers complete placements each year may only have a dozen reviews online. This can make assessing their ability to provide support and adoption services challenging because the vast majority had a wonderful adoption experience.
Ultimately, it’s crucial that when reading reviews of adoption agencies, you keep in mind that the internet often doesn’t reflect the positive experiences people have.
2. Birth Mothers May Be Less Likely to Leave Adoption Agency Reviews
Even as open adoption has become the norm, birth mothers are less likely to leave reviews of adoption agencies because of the general confidential nature of adoption.
Sharing an open relationship with an adoptive family is one thing, but sharing a deeply personal story online with strangers is another.
Some larger national adoption agencies offer online testimonials from birth mothers having placed an adoption through the agency. 3. Adoption is Emotional
As mentioned above, adoption is an emotional process, which is why many birth mothers and adoptive families may be reluctant to share adoption agency ratings and reviews online. Not only are some online reviews of adoption agencies negative, but the comments on those reviews can be worse and full of misinformation.
Those involved in adoption have different experiences, and as much as adoption professionals and attorneys try to make it as seamless as possible, there will always be challenging moments.
So, when reading domestic adoption agency reviews, keep in mind that your experience won’t be the same as the reviewer’s.
4. Birth Mothers Choose Professionals for Different Reasons
The choice of an adoption agency is the first significant step in the adoption process. Birth mothers choose a particular agency and professional for various reasons. Because of this, you may find that while one adoption agency review was negative, that same agency might be a better fit for your needs.
The bottom line is not to let one or even a handful of negative adoption agency ratings turn you off from exploring an agency’s services.
Contact an agency of interest, ask good questions and make your own determination whether they are the right fit for your adoption journey.
5. It’s Helpful to Understand the Adoption Process
People who don’t fully understand the adoption process can use that lack of understanding to post negative domestic adoption agency reviews.
Much of the misunderstanding of how the adoption process works is related to finances. In some cases, birth mothers have the impression that they receive compensation for placing a baby for adoption. Getting “paid” for putting a child up for adoption is illegal.
Instead, birth mothers can receive financial assistance for pregnancy-related living expenses. The amount of available assistance is determined by individual state adoption laws.
Suppose you find negative reviews of adoption agencies that directly reference not getting money for adoption. In that case, it’s important to recognize that the person writing the review likely doesn’t understand how the process works.
You can always learn more about financial assistance during the adoption process by filling out our online form to connect with a professional.
6. Identifying Fake Reviews
Organizations may pay for positive reviews of their services or write negative adoption agency reviews to make themselves look better.
Identifying these reviews can be difficult, but knowing fake reviews exist is a helpful tip for weeding out what’s real and what isn’t.
While birth mothers and adoptive parents typically don’t provide much detail, you want to look for adoption agency reviews that include specifics about a particular event, professional or circumstance.
The fake reviews will lean into adjectives such as “great” and “terrible,” generalizing an experience to make an agency sound like a bad fit without providing detail as to why.
Weigh the overall reputation of an agency. Red flags like reviews with a similar pattern posted many times over can help you spot fake reviews of adoption agencies.
Additional Tips for Choosing the Right Adoption Agency
The best way to determine whether an adoption agency is a good fit is to talk to them directly.
You can find a complete guide to choosing an adoption agency here. You can also speak to a professional to get more information on how to choose an adoption agency by filling out this form.
Here are some additional tips:
- Contact an adoption agency you’re interested in and ask detailed questions about their process, support, services and how they plan to guide you through your journey. Transparent, honest answers from attorneys and agencies are positive signs that they might be the right fit for your adoption.
- Take time to look at a prospective agency’s website. Look for information about their services, financial assistance and even profiles of available adoptive families.
- Decide what services are most important to you. Do you value having 24/7 access to your adoption professional over having access to family profiles? Whatever you feel is most important can help you decide which agency is best suited for your adoption.
Ultimately, adoption agency reviews are a baseline for finding potential options. However, working with a professional and contacting an agency is the best way to determine which agency is the right fit for your adoption journey.
Because you’re making the heroic decision to give your child a chance at a life full of opportunity, you deserve to work with the best agency and professionals that can provide you with the support you need.
