Why use Journeys of the Heart for your domestic adoption? 

2007 figures reveal that 48% of our adopting parents in our domestic program are successful within the first 6 months of enrolling.  98% of the families are successful within a year.

The primary reasons are our professional and compassionate staff with extensive experience in domestic adoption, as well as our increasing number of placements each year.  In addition, here are other important reasons to use JOH’s adoption services.

1.  There is NO risk to you about losing money for expectant parent expenses.  JOH pays for the expectant parent expenses and JOH loses that money if she decides not to place.  Agencies and attorneys will tell you that expectant parents rarely change their minds about placing their child for adoption.   That is true, but it does happen no matter how good a job the agency does in counseling the expectant parent.  Adoption is a complex matter involving many people and factors.  Some will fall through, and this is appropriate when a birth parent weighs many factors and decides that she can successfully parent.   Expectant parents can and do change their minds at the hospital or after you have supported them for many months and after spending significant money on their expenses.  Expectant parent expenses generally run between $2,000-$8,000 or more.   Most families are not able to afford to lose that much money on a failed adoption.

2.  JOH keeps our group of adopting parents at a manageable number for success.  For instance, we do not have 60 waiting parents nor do we want that number.  We want expectant parents considering adoption to have a good choice of families but we also want the waiting parents to have a good chance of being shown and selected.  Our waiting pool of families is usually 20 to 40.   JOH places between 25-35 children per year and this ratio gives a waiting family an excellent chance of being shown and selected.

3.  Journeys provides excellent professional services.  Counseling of expectant parents, marketing of the adoptive families, negotiations regarding adoption agreements, assistance in assembling your portfolio and adoption education.  Journeys of the Heart offers domestic families an edge on the world wide web.  Seven days a week we manage our four national websites, presenting waiting family letters and photos to potential, expectant parents.  Expectant parents have chosen families based solely on what they have seen on one of our sites.  We have designed our approach to make sure we are  responsive 365 days a year to both waiting families and expectant parents.   Our carefully designed and professionally promoted  presence on the internet cuts family waiting time down dramatically, and helps bring children home.

4.  Journeys does not require a large investment from families up-front.  We provide services to you at very little initial cost, requiring the bulk of the fee at your matching with an expectant parent.  If for any reason you find that you would like to go elsewhere you can afford to do so because you don’t have a huge fee invested in Journeys.  We do this because we are confident you will be pleased with our services.

5.  JOH has had a successful domestic program since 1993.  Although the majority of our expecting parents come from Oregon and Washington, our branch offices in Illinois, North Carolina and Hawaii serve many families and expectant parents/birth mothers with local adoption coordinators in those states..  

Please feel free to e-mail Susan@journeysoftheheart.net or call 503-681-3075 to clarify or amplify any of the issues discussed here.