BETHANY ~ successful adoption but would NOT use again

We signed up with Bethany for a NSN adoption and then signed onto the waiting list for SN (with the shared list) as soon as we could. We requested a boy or girl, of a certain age, with a minor need. I thought for sure we would be referred a boy quickly since most families wanted a girl.

Bethany did not allow us to look at the shared list, but I was able to see it through another agency at the time. I would ask our SW about certain kids and could we look at their files... it never happened and they seemed out of sorts that I could see the list of children waiting and had the nerve to ask them about looking at files of kids "I picked out". I was never encouraged or told I could talk with the head person of the China program who did all the matching. Every concern or question I had had to go through the SW to the China coordinator. My questions of why were we not being matched to children slightly out of our age range, I was told that we would have to increase our age range before they would consider it. I feel like if an agency was really trying to find families for children, they would work "outside the box" and at least ASK us if we wanted to consider a child a tiny bit older than we requested.

Although Bethany is an upstanding agency and very ethical, they are way too conservative and "quiet" for the family who wants to be involved in their adoption. Our SW did not know much of the information I knew and got from Rumor Queen! And infact our agency discouraged us from going to "rumor" sites as they did not think the info from there was accurate and would not help us in our process. Anyone who frequents RQ, knows this is so not true!

Bethany IS a good agency for the family who doesn't want to be active in their process and just wants to sit back and wait to be matched. We had some families in our travel group like that and they were very happy using Bethany... but the majority of people that I talk with the have used Bethany feel the SAME way as we do (even in different states).

We did have a successful adoption and our child is AMAZING!!!! We are looking to start the process again and although Bethany did help us through the adoption and the in-China team was great, there are so many recommendations for other outstanding agencies, we will be looking elsewhere for another agency. I hear BAAS is GREAT!