Start with What Adopting Families Should Know About Adoption Consultants to understand how consultants fit into the adoption landscape, then use this guide to ask questions that will help you decide.
Adoption consultants are independent advisors who guide waiting families through parts of the private domestic adoption process. For some families, consultants play a meaningful role by offering education, emotional support, and connections to licensed adoption professionals.
Because adoption consultants are unlicensed and operate without formal oversight, their services vary widely in scope, quality, and ethics.
Families considering hiring an adoption consultant should carefully assess whether a particular consultant’s role, practices, and partnerships align with ethical, legal, and child-centered values..
Step 1: Clarify the Consultant’s Role and Scope
What the consultant should and should not do
In many states, only licensed adoption agencies and attorneys are permitted to provide adoption services such as matching, counseling, and coordinating consent. Adoption consultants should maintain an advisory and educational role, leaving all direct adoption services to licensed professionals.
What services do you offer?
A reputable adoption consultant supports families by emphasizing education, guidance, and connection, not by replacing licensed professionals. Adoption consultants should provide services such as the following, when done in coordination with licensed professionals:
Pre-adoption education
Helping families understand each step of private domestic adoption, including timelines, terminology, and expectations.
Administrative support
Helping families track paperwork, timelines, and next steps with licensed providers.
Emotional support
Providing steady, compassionate support through the uncertainty and emotional complexity of waiting to adopt.
Profile development
Assisting with the creation or refinement of adoptive family profiles to be shared only with licensed agencies or attorneys.
Professional referrals and networking
Connecting families with licensed, vetted adoption agencies, attorneys, and home study providers.
Opportunity evaluation: Helping families review and evaluate adoption opportunities, in collaboration with their agency or attorney, without directing outcomes.
Ongoing education: Offering or recommending resources on trauma-informed parenting, openness in adoption, and adoptee-centered perspectives.
Post-adoption referrals: Connecting families with adoption-competent therapists, support groups, and continuing education.
As discussed inWhat Adopting Families Should Know About Adoption Consultants, these services should supplement, not replace, the work of licensed professionals. These boundaries are critical to preserving informed consent, legal compliance, and ethical roles in adoption.
Consultants should not:
- facilitate or arrange adoptions
- communicate directly with expectant parents
- provide legal advice or counseling
- control, influence, or financially benefit from matching decisions
Do you work directly with expectant parents?
Even if someone calls themselves an adoption consultant, anyone who encourages pregnant women to contact them directly or markets services to expectant parents may be acting as an unlicensed intermediary. In most states, this is prohibited.
Ethical consultants work exclusively with adoptive families and coordinate only with licensed, reputable agencies and attorneys who are providing services to expectant parents.
How do you ensure your services comply with state adoption laws?
Adoption laws vary significantly by state. A responsible consultant should clearly explain how they stay informed about legal requirements, ideally by regularly consulting adoption attorneys and encouraging their clients to do the same.
Step 2: Evaluate Ethics, Transparency, and Oversight
How information is sourced and shared
Once you understand a consultant’s role, the next step is to evaluate their ethics and transparency.
A consultant is only as ethical as their professional network. Families should assume that any gaps in transparency, legality, or accountability within that network ultimately affect them.
Do you share adoption opportunities only from licensed agencies and attorneys?
Ethical consultants share adoption opportunities only from licensed, reputable agencies or attorneys. Passing along opportunities from unlicensed or unreliable sources places adoptive parents, expectant parents, and children at risk of legal and ethical harm.
The AdoptMatch Guiding Principles offer a helpful benchmark for ethical practice. Licensure can be verified using the AdoptChange Adoption Provider Search Tool.
How do you vet the agencies and attorneys in your network?
Consultants should be able to clearly identify the professionals they work with and explain how each was selected. Strong answers often reference:
- current licensure and good standing
- reasonable and transparent fees
- non-coercive counseling practices
- a transparent matching process
- separate legal representation for placing parents
- clear expectations around post-adoption contact
- meaningful post-placement support for all parties
Vague, evasive, or defensive answers are a red flag. Ethical consultants welcome scrutiny.
Step 3: Understand Costs and Decision-Making
How money, pressure, and conflicts of interest show up in practice
Uncertainty about costs is often one of the most stressful aspects of adopting. This uncertainty is common, but it is not unavoidable. Consultants should communicate clearly, openly, and often about anticipated expenses.
What are your fees, and what total costs should we expect?
Before hiring a consultant, families should receive a clear, written breakdown of the consultant’s fees and the services included.
Consultants should also help families anticipate other likely expenses, including:
- agency or attorney fees
- home study costs
- legally allowable expectant parent living expenses
Families should ask whether adoption opportunities shared through the consultant’s network typically fall within their stated budget and whether past clients experienced significant cost increases after matching.
Consultants should explain when and how fees are collected, whether unused fees are refundable, and whether they track average costs associated with providers in their network.
Do we retain full control over when and how our profile is shared?
Adoptive families should always retain full control over whether their profile is presented to an expectant parent.
Be cautious if a consultant:
- limits how often you can decline opportunities
- tracks response rates or “competitiveness”
- pressures families to move forward quickly
- discourages outside review
- limits requests for additional information
Any system that penalizes families for reasonably saying no undermines informed consent and shifts decision-making away from readiness and toward urgency. In a child-centered adoption process, saying no can be just as important as saying yes.
Do you receive referral fees or other financial incentives from providers?
A consultant’s fees should never be tied to referrals, matches, or placements. Accepting compensation from agencies or attorneys creates a serious conflict of interest and is illegal in many states. Consultants should disclose all financial relationships clearly and in writing.
Step 4: Evaluate Education and Emotional Support Over Time
How preparation and support shape long-term outcomes
Beyond logistics and costs, families should consider how well a consultant prepares and supports them for the lifelong realities of adoption. Education and emotional support should not be treated as optional add-ons to adoption. They shape how families understand risk, navigate uncertainty, and parent long after placement.
What kind of pre-adoption education do you provide or recommend?
The best consultants offer or recommend education that goes beyond the home study, including:
- emotional realities of adoption
- trauma-informed parenting
- openness in adoption
- birth parent and adoptee perspectives
- legal requirements
Education should be current, evidence-based, and child-centered.
How do you support families emotionally during the process?
Adoption involves uncertainty, grief, and complex emotions. Qualified consultants normalize these realities and help families stay grounded while making thoughtful decisions.
What about post-adoption support?
Adoption is lifelong. Ethical consultants encourage ongoing education and connect families with adoptee-led voices, birth parent perspectives, trauma-informed resources, and adoption-competent clinicians.
The Bottom Line: Choose Ethics Over Expediency
A reputable adoption consultant welcomes questions, clearly explains their role and fees, adheres to the law, stays within their area of expertise, and provides families with the information and space needed to make informed decisions.
By asking these questions before hiring an adoption consultant, families are not simply evaluating a service provider. They are being intentional about the kind of adoption process they want to participate in, and the values they want to center for their future child.
