The traditional model for domestic adoption is that families sign up with a local agency with high up-front costs, then wait to be matched with an expectant mother working directly with that agency. This process can take years, as families are limited to the expectant mothers that are working with that agency. Purl Adoption Advisory has a relationship with numerous adoption professionals (attorneys and agencies) across the country who are legally authorized to place a child for adoption. We work closely with those professionals and can help prospective adoptive families better understand the right professionals for them and their adoption journey, and help them to utilize a multi-attorney/agency approach. Prior to a “match” our clients have a greater opportunity to view information from a variety of agencies and attorneys typically without a high up front cost. We also assist our Purl Families with adoption outreach, also giving these prospective adoptive families the opportunity to “self-match”, oftentimes at a much lower cost. This multi-attorney/agency approach combined with guidance on self-matching, typically results in quicker and a lower than average adoption cost, with our families feeling more supported and prepared for adoption throughout.

Purl Adoption Advisory is not a licensed placing agency. We are professional adoption advisors who advise our clients throughout the adoption process and refer our clients to licensed placement attorneys and licensed, ethical agencies that we have relationships with throughout the United States.

No, Purl Adoption Advisory are professional adoption advisors and not adoption facilitators. We are advocates, educators, guides and a referral source for adoptive parents. We DO NOT have direct contact with expectant parents considering adoption and we NEVER match an adoptive family and an expectant family together directly, matching is done through the attorneys and the agencies we refer our clients to or through the adoptive parents’ own marketing.

The best way we can describe our role is that we are an adoption planner for an adoption similar to hiring a wedding planner for your wedding. We help you through the various steps in the adoption process, ensuring you are using ethical professionals and positioning yourself to be successful in a domestic infant adoption. We help you select a home study provider in your state, guiding you through that process. We work with you on creating the most attractive and authentic family profile, ideally helping design and printing that before your home study is complete. Then, once you are nearing home study completion, we help you connect with placing adoption professionals that you can work with in your adoption, adoption professionals that work within your budget and your adoption preferences. We provide education and resources throughout your adoption, then guide you and help you assess the risk once you begin to see adoption opportunities from various sources. We help you form your adoption team (home study provider, placing professional and adoption attorney), at the right time in your adoption, making the process smoother for all members of the adoption triad.

You are not required to hire an attorney at the outset, although we will help you identify attorneys to assist you during your adoption process. You will need an attorney, at a minimum, for finalization of your adoption, but in some cases that service will be included through your placing agency. Purl Adoption Advisory will recommend our clients to experienced adoption attorneys in the respective state at the time they go active in their search, but definitely by the time of a match, to ensure that the expectant families’ rights are terminated appropriately and to ensure that the expenses provided to an expectant mother comply with state law. We refer our clients to reasonable, licensed, experienced adoption attorneys in their area or in the state they adopt from, in most cases an attorney with the Academy of Adoption and Assisted Reproduction Attorneys.

Generally, we work with prospective adoptive families from all across the country (although our services are limited to families in some states). We work with matching attorneys and agencies and see adoption opportunities from across the country, and can help families better understand the pros/cons with adopting from a specific state. We have strong referral relationships with many professionals in states where consents to an adoption can occur within 72 hours after the birth of the child, at which point they are typically irrevocable.

Once an expectant family signs irrevocable surrenders/consents they cannot revoke them except in very rare circumstances (typically when a birth family can prove fraud or duress).

Purl Adoption Advisory will work with all types of families from single persons to married couples (traditional and same sex). We accept all faiths and races. Our guiding principal is your family is able to successfully complete a home study and provide a stable home with unconditional love for a child/children. We do request you have a brief phone interview with a Purl advisor to assess if your priorities match our services. Prospective clients should also be advised that many agencies, including those that may be referred by Purl Adoption Advisory, have restrictions on faith, race, age, marital status or length of a marriage before adopting and you may see less opportunities than another adoptive family due to those restrictions.

We don’t have strict age limits, however, individuals over the age of 50 may experience some difficulty in adopting, so please contact us if one of the prospective adoptive parents is over the age of 50 so that we can discuss some of the potential limitations. As discussed above, some of the adoption professionals we refer to may have an age requirement.

We will consider adoptive families across the country, but may refuse to accept clients living in select states due to the adoption laws in those states.

Yes. There are many grants, loans, tax credits and adoption fundraising opportunities that can help assist prospective adoptive families ease the financial burden of adoption. We provide education on these sources to our Purl clients, including a detailed list of financial resources, and we also bring in guest speakers to speak on this topic periodically to our Purl Families.

Yes, a family profile is one of the most important parts of the adoption process since it is how an adoptive family is chosen by an expectant parent. A family profile is a visual way to tell a family considering adoption about your family’s story, your thoughts on adoption, and your plans for the future. Click here to learn more about how it is used in the adoption process. Purl Adoption Advisory has contracted with professional graphic designers to create engaging, artistic, creative and comforting family profiles. Our clients choose from many professional designed templates and our fee includes customizing those templates into a family profile design that will help our clients stand out from other families that might be presenting to the same expectant parents.

Purl Adoption Advisory does not charge more for multiples. We charge a flat fee whether you ultimately end up adopting a singleton, twins or triplets. Attorney and Agency fees vary widely. Some professionals we refer to for matching and placement may require an additional fee for multiples.

We are not a licensed home study agency, so we will refer you to a home study agency in your area once you become a client of Purl Adoption Advisory. We do encourage families to work on their family profile while they are working on their home study, so we encourage families not to wait until after their home study is complete before contacting us. However, we offer services that can assist prospective adoptive families no matter where they are in their adoption process.

Any adoption placement that involves a child outside of your state of residence will involve an agreement enacted by all 50 U.S states, the District of Columbia and the Virgin Islands called the Interstate Compact on the Placement of Children (ICPC). Adoptive parents may not travel back to their state of residence with the child they are adopting until they receive ICPC approval.

The majority of families receive ICPC approval within 7-10 business days of submission of the ICPC documents, however the ICPC processing time has gotten much quicker in some states. Adoptive families should prepare for an out of state stay of at least 3 weeks, however, only one adoptive parent is required to stay with the child pending ICPC approval. In some circumstances there may be “respite” or “cradle care,” pending ICPC approval.

As of September 2020, we are not accepting families who are gender specific for our Advisement Packages, except in very unique situations. For more information about why being gender specific can make your adoption journey so much more difficult, please click here. If we do accept families who are gender specific, they will need to acknowledge that the wait could be up to twice as long as our average waiting period.

Many people contact us for support or guidance on domestic infant adoption after undergoing unsuccessful fertility treatments. Most of these families have never even heard of embryo adoption or embryo donation. Many fertility doctors/specialists will discuss utilizing donor eggs or sperm after unsuccessful in vitro fertilization, but rarely do they offer information about embryo adoption or embryo donation. Embryo adoption is similar to adoption, but allows the adoptive mother to carry a genetically unrelated child and experience pregnancy and delivery, assuming the mother has no contraindications to carry a child to term. Rather than adopting an infant that is already born, adoptive parents (or intended parents) instead adopt, or receive the donation of, a frozen embryo donated by someone who has been through in vitro fertilization. Typically those families have been successful with their own IVF cycles, but have completed their family and still have extra frozen embryos remaining. Embryo adoption and embryo adoption can actually be much less expensive than domestic infant adoption, but is not right for every family, as discussed more here. Through our Adoption/Embryo Coaching Packages, we help families understand the differences between domestic infant adoption and embryo donation/adoption, and help them determine the best route for them to grow their family. Once they determine the best route, we’ll provide them extensive resources and recommend professionals that can support them in their chosen journey.