Homestudy Payment

[MelissaTC]

Is it common to pay upfront for a homestudy? I guess some agencies do things differently but this agency wants their $1200 before they do it. Just curious...

[kalebsmama]

I think they can vary alot. If I remember correctly, we paid 1/2 up front, and the other 1/2 at completion. When we updated it, the fee was less, and we paid it all upfront. I think ours cost $900 the first time, and $500 to update after 2yrs. This was in 2001 and 2003.

The same is for agency fees. My friend paid $12,000 upfront that covered everything for her domestic adoption. Our agency charges $5000 that is paid at placement, and then you pay the attorney fees and other fees as needed. I liked this way better so that if we found a child somewhere else, we weren't committed to paying the fees. Our agency was ok with having your name in at more than one place.

Good luck and have fun! The homestudy isn't really that bad!

[icunurse]

Our agency also does a "pay-as-you-go". Don't have the stats in front of me, but it was a few hundred to start, another payment before you took the classes (our agency has you take aoption classes as part of the homestudy "process"), and a final payment upon completion of the homestudy. Then, you make the last and biggest payment when a child is placed with you.
Traci
~Connor's Mom~
http://lilypie.com/baby1/050204/1/0/1/-6/.png (http://lilypie.com)

[holliam]

Our adoption agency and homestudy agency are the same, and we paid $1200 up front for our homestudy. As soon as that was paid, one of the social workers contacted us to arrange our visits.

We have post-adoption visit costs that we have not paid yet.

All the other fees have been incremental, with so much due at different stages.

When you are choosing an agency, be sure to ask what happens if you lose a referral. No one wants to think about this, but when it happens to you, it's suddenly an important question.

We lost our first referral and we have not been required to pay anything for our second referral. So, someone lost money on our adoption process, but so far it hasn't been us.

Holli

[Kimberly H]

Melissa, we paid in 2 payments also. One due upon the first meeting, the second due when we received the homestudy in our hands. The initial homestudy was $1,200 and the post-placement is $375. I know her fees went up for the initial homestudy right after we started ours.

Definitely shop around for hs agencies! We used someone based on her ability to get us through the process, not hold our hands. Her homestudies are GOLD to CCAI and China so it's worth it. She's short in email and won't research answers for you - case in point, I said I knew from DSS that we qualify for an extra deduction on our SC state taxes because Mia's considered special needs (foreign adoption of an orphan, not a physical reason) but I couldn't find where it went on the form. She referred me to the Dept of Revenue. Granted, she's not a tax specialist but you know I'm not the first person to ask and I've paid her a lot of money, pre-and-post-adoption to work for me. Frustrating, yes - but I'd use her again in a heartbeat if we adopted from China again.

[MelissaTC]

Holli- are you using Mandala? I remember you mentioning that you were using an agency in Chapel Hill. Anyway, Mandala is who we are considering for our Homestudy since we are using CCAI for our adoption. Just curious.... :)

[holliam]

YES!!! Oh my goodness! I LOVE MANDALA!!! I swear to you, I have had the WORST adoption experience in the world, and I STILL love my agency. We've had some bumps, but we've worked it out, and they are awesome.

Don't worry about it AT ALL! They are the most ethical, honorable, wonderful agency. As soon as they have your money, they will have the social worker contact you and the appointments will be arranged, etc.

Email me if you have any questions. I loved our social worker! She was an adoptive mama too; she has 2 kids from Russia. I know dozens of Mandala families! :)

holli @ holliam dot org

Holli

[malie]

Our agency collected the payment in 3 installments (actually our social worker really didn't care when we paid..just that we weren't getting our homestudy until we did :) but we did the 3 installments). We used CSM (didn't have a choice because we were adopting from Korea but we were happy with them too)

However I ate breakfast with a family that used Mandala (for a domestic adoption) yesterday morning and they really liked them). I haven't heard anything bad about them from anyone.

(Just how many of us are from NC anyway :) seems like a good number here on the adoption board at least )

The only agency that I've really heard anything negative about in NC is LFS but I think that was more a function of the fact that the adoption was to Korea and we have a couple of steps to take with the USCIS that others don't and the person's SW didn't seem to be up on them.

Obviously of course there is good and bad with any agency and different people have different opinions but like I said even Mandala is different from some in requesting the money up front, it is an agency that most people say good things about

[CAM7]

and then 1/2 on completion...

Cammie