Introduction to Americans Adopting Orphans

It is the mission of Americans Adopting Orphans:

1. To advocate for, assist, and support American citizens in ethically adopting and providing aid to orphaned and abandoned children in other countries.
2. To encourage and allow parents to have choice and freedom in the adoption of their children.
3. To keep adoption affordable and available to a wide range of people.

We believe that by making adoption a rewarding, empowering, and affordable experience that more children will find homes.

Americans Adopting Orphans Placement Agency is a fully licensed, not-for-profit adoption agency established in 1994. Our headquarters is in Seattle, Washington with a branch office in Missouri. Copies of our licenses are available on request. We have programs in China and Ukraine. As an agency that works directly with the Chinese government we also serve as the China Program Foreign Service Provider for other agencies with China programs.

Dave and Cindy Ptasnik are the founders and co-directors of Americans Adopting Orphans. Dave is an adoptee, and together we decided that we wanted to start our family through adoption. In November of 1992 we completed the adoption of our daughter Katie Li from China. While delighted with the end result, we felt unfulfilled and frustrated by the adoption process. When we decided to adopt again, being "do-it-yourselfers", we chose to attempt a parent-initiated adoption. In a parent-initiated adoption, the adoptive parents complete an adoption without the assistance of an agency. After months of research and work we applied to China to adopt our son Joseph. We completed our adoption in September of 1994, and were much more satisfied with our adoption process the second time.

We found the parent-initiated adoption experience to be immensely rewarding. It was our adoption, not some agency's adoption. At the same time it was a very stressful experience. We were constantly seeking more and more information about the adoption process. Often we had to make decisions without professional advice. We made some mistakes, and learned much along the way. With the knowledge we had gained, we knew that we could help other families with their adoptions. We also knew that we could help the children and the parents.

Many adoption agencies are established to provide material support and religious training to children in need. We applaud their goals and their direct support of children in the US and around the world. For many of these agencies, the needs and wants of the adoptive parents are secondary to other agency programs and goals. That was how we felt when we adopted Katie Li.

It is our belief that there is also a need to advocate for the adoptive parents. By dedicating our agency to providing the highest levels of personal service, and by offering parents inexpensive as well as full service options and choices on how their adoption works, we believe that we open the adoption experience to more people. This means that people who want more control and service than is allowed by most agencies or who are unable to afford typical agency fees will be more likely to adopt. This opens adoption to more parents, so that more children will find homes. By creating a family based agency, we help more kids.

When analyzing adoption, and those things we found frustrating about it, there were several areas where we believed we could not only involve more families in adoption, but also increase the involvement of families in their own adoption process. When we adopted Katie Li, we wanted to know more about how our adoption was being processed, what was happening to our paperwork, what was going to happen next, what we could do to help, and what was going on in China in terms of politics, the culture, and even the weather. That is why client families of Americans Adopting Orphans are among the most well-informed adoptive parents about their own adoption and adoption processing in general. To our knowledge, our list of Frequently Asked Questions is the most complete and informative available. No other agency works so hard to provide so much specific information to the general public. But, getting back to our own adoption experiences, there were also times when we found ourselves doing things during our adoption of our son that would have been much easier for an agency to do. We wanted more choices in our family's adoption process.

While we could select from many different agencies, most of them seemed about the same to us. We only saw agencies charging flat non-itemized fees for their mandatory services and procedures. While we could choose whether we wanted to adopt domestically or internationally, and while we could choose a country, we had no real choices about how our adoption was handled. We couldn't choose the part of the country from which we adopted, who helped us overseas, or even who would be responsible for gathering routine documents like birth certificates and reference letters.

Americans Adopting Orphans gives you these choices and more. We make adoption an empowering experience. With our unique program, we have divided the adoption process into six steps. At each step you may choose from multiple levels of support and service. The choice is yours about how you want your adoption to proceed. You tell us how much of your adoption you want to do, and how much you want us to do.

All too often we have also found that agencies provide very little assistance or support to their families, regardless of the fees they charge. Some agencies may consider it sufficient to simply hand a family a list of documents and give the families little support in gathering them, or to leave their families in the hands of commercial tour guides instead of adoption specialists. Americans Adopting Orphans provides much higher levels of service to families who request those levels of services. From the finest and most detailed Instruction Packs available, to pre-made forms and organizers that make document gathering easier, to adoption professionals who work with families while they are overseas, you have more service, support, and help available to your family than most agencies offer.

We also give you control over the cost of your adoption and how your money is spent. Many agencies have a rigid program that both determines and limits what services you must receive. In our experience many families prefer to determine for themselves what their agency does for them. Some choose the independence to research and do paperwork on their own; or to use family, friends, and personal resources to be on their own while overseas to lower their adoption costs. Other families choose to receive information and assistance and the security of being able to access the resources and in-country staff of our agency whenever they want or need to. Families sometimes focus on other aspects of their lives and leave the details and planning of their adoption to our professional staff, receiving the highest level of personal and individualized service.

Many adoption agencies would use the fees paid to them by your family to pay for things that are not directly related to your family's adoption needs. Some have sliding scales that require more affluent families to pay higher fees. Families wanting to adopt healthy infants can be placed at a financial disadvantage by agencies that are more focused on placing emotionally at-risk, physically handicapped, and/or older children. Americans Adopting Orphans believes that each family should pay for the services they receive, regardless of the child they wish to adopt or their personal finances.

Other agencies support religious missions or orphanages in other countries. While we too support orphanages, we do not believe that our adoptive families should have to subsidize the causes, or pay for services, that we think are important. Therefore, Americans Adopting Orphans only asks you to pay for your adoption and the services you want for your family. This means that Americans Adopting Orphans provides you with what you want whether it is more service, or lower fees. And we always help lower your overall adoption costs.

We let you decide where your charitable contributions should go. Again, the choice is yours. If you have a desire to make a donation, we can assist you in making sure your tax deductible contribution gets to where you want it to go in China or Ukraine. We can direct your voluntary contributions to specific orphanages or organizations, particularly within China. At the same time, we never require families to make donations outside of those required by foreign governments or organizations.

It is our belief that Americans Adopting Orphans is the best value adoption agency available in the U.S. It is not our goal to be critical of, or take clients away from, other agencies. However, we know that many families have felt excluded from adoption because of high fees or inflexible programs. This is about helping kids, not who has the longest client list. We offer an exciting alternative and opportunity for your family to grow.

We've been making a difference one baby at a time beginning with the adoption of our own children. We know that adoption is often a costly, rigid, and frustrating process, but it doesn't have to be. The agency you select will be significant to your overall satisfaction with the adoption process. If it is important to you to have more control over the services you receive, the fees you pay, your involvement in the adoption process, and the causes you support, we can help. Americans Adopting Orphans provides choice and freedom for your adoption.