Many hopeful adoptive parents turn to adoption consultants because the adoption process can feel opaque, fragmented, and overwhelming.
Adoption agencies and attorneys tend to operate within separate professional and geographic silos, each serving their own waiting families and expectant parents. By maintaining relationships across multiple providers, consultants aggregate information about available opportunities, ideally creating broader access and visibility.
Consultants promise guidance, education, and access in a landscape that is emotionally charged and difficult to navigate. For some families, that promise is fulfilled. For others, it comes with unexpected costs, legal risks, and ethical concerns. Increasingly, these risks extend beyond individual families and reflect broader structural shifts in how adoptions are arranged. Understanding what adoption consultants do, how they differ from other unlicensed actors, and where the risks lie is essential when choosing to work with an adoption consultant.
When prospective adoptive parents hire an adoption consultant, they typically enter into a one to two-year contract and pay fees ranging from $3,000 to $10,000. Consultants commonly assist with:
Each of these services is advisory in nature and intended to supplement, not replace, licensed adoption professionals.
Once engaged, families usually begin receiving information about available opportunities, often referred to as “adoption situations.” These summaries may include an expectant mother’s due date, location, limited social or medical history, the professional working with her, and estimated costs.
In most cases, this information originates with adoption agencies, attorneys, or unlicensed intermediaries in the consultant’s network. The source of this information can matter significantly, particularly when it affects legal oversight and accountability, a distinction discussed further below. Sometimes families are instead given a list of providers and asked to register with them individually.
Consultants then circulate these situations to their waiting families and ask whether they wish to have their profiles presented. If an expectant mother selects one of those families, the consultant typically coordinates with the placing professional to arrange an introduction.
After that, things often move very quickly. If the expectant mother says yes to the family after that initial introduction, a “match” has been made, and the adoptive parents are usually required to sign a contract with and pay fees to the expectant mother’s adoption professional.
Consultants often remain involved post-match, guiding clients through the pregnancy, birth, and placement process. If an expectant parent ultimately chooses to parent, the consultant may also provide emotional support and help families determine next steps.
Domestic adoption in the United States is highly fragmented. Adoption agencies and attorneys are licensed and regulated at the state level and typically operate within defined geographic, professional, and organizational boundaries. Each provider serves their own waiting families and the expectant parents who find them.
For adoptive families, this structure can feel limiting. Families may see adoption opportunities associated with only one agency or attorney, even though expectant parents are scattered throughout the country. Navigating these separate systems can be confusing, time-consuming, and opaque, particularly for families new to adoption.
Adoption consultants emerged, in part, as a response to this fragmentation. By maintaining relationships across multiple agencies, attorneys, and adoption professionals, consultants aggregate information that is otherwise dispersed. The benefit to adopting families is often broader visibility, increased choice, and a clearer sense of how adoption operates across providers.
Adoptive families working directly with a single agency or attorney are often required to make substantial upfront financial commitments before they can assess how many opportunities may ultimately be available to them. In practice, this can mean placing all of their financial eggs in one basket.
If that provider has limited expectant parent contacts, geographic reach, or case volume, families may wait for extended periods with few options, despite having already paid significant fees. For many families, this concentration of financial and emotional risk is a source of stress and uncertainty.
This dynamic has contributed to the appeal of adoption consultants. By operating across multiple providers, consultants offer families a way to diversify access rather than tying their entire adoption journey to a single agency or attorney. This approach has real appeal. For many families, it helps explain why consultants feel more accessible and supportive than traditional, siloed pathways, even though the underlying adoption services are still being provided by licensed professionals. This same dynamic also explains why consultants have gained traction while operating outside existing regulatory frameworks, often without families fully realizing it when protections are lost.
At the same time, the absence of licensure, oversight, and enforceable accountability raises important concerns. While collaboration itself is not inherently problematic, performing it without licensure, oversight, or accountability can expose families, expectant parents, and children to legal and ethical risk. The growth of adoption consultants highlights both a structural weakness in the current system and the need for solutions that combine collaboration with professional safeguards.
Since consultants are not licensed, regulated, or overseen by any government authority, the term “adoption consultant” has no legal meaning in any state. There are no minimum qualifications, no standardized training requirements, and no formal complaint process.
This makes it essential for families to evaluate what a provider actually does, not what they call themselves.
An entity operating under the label “consultant” may, in fact, be acting as an unlicensed intermediary, sometimes referred to as a facilitator, marketer, or advertiser. These actors arrange adoptions directly between expectant parents and prospective adoptive families for a fee, often without oversight and, in most states, in violation of adoption laws. Working with such an intermediary can jeopardize the legality and stability of an adoption.
What distinguishes true consultants from unlicensed intermediaries is the nature of their work:
Because both operate outside regulatory systems, families must carefully examine the services offered and the role the provider plays in the matching process. Titles alone do not convey legal authority, professional standards, or accountability.
Use our AdoptChange Search Tool to determine whether an adoption provider is licensed, where they’re located, and which websites they operate.
To better understand how these dynamics play out in practice, we conducted an informal online survey of over 200 adoptive parents who worked with consultants between 2020 and 2025. Respondents included families who successfully adopted and those still waiting.
Participants were invited to describe their experiences in their own words. While the survey was not independently certified, it offers meaningful insight into both the perceived benefits and the risks of working with an adoption consultant.
Where Families Say Consultants Were Helpful
Ongoing support
Many respondents emphasized the value of having a consistent point of contact who could provide reassurance and help them orient themselves in an unfamiliar and emotionally charged process. These benefits were most often described in terms of emotional steadiness and general process navigation, rather than legal, clinical, or social work expertise.
“[Our consultant’s] goal was to make sure we understood the ‘dos and don’ts’ of the process, the pros and cons to consider when we weighed whether to submit our profile, and how to avoid getting our hopes up.”
“We genuinely didn’t know where to start with the adoption process, and [our consultant] laid it out for us.”
Personalized guidance
Families distinguished general emotional support from more tailored advice, such as feedback on profiles and help evaluating specific opportunities. Respondents often described consultants as sounding boards who helped them think through decisions rather than as professionals providing formal case analysis.
“Our consultant was a great sounding board. It was nice to know she was in our corner to help us vet situations and flag potential red flags.”
“The guidance on what steps to take was beneficial. We knew very little, and the information online was overwhelming.”
Expanded network
Many respondents noted that their consultant’s network gave them access to a broader range of opportunities across multiple adoption professionals. This access was perceived as increasing choice and reducing pressure.
“With our consultant, we saw more ethical cases and didn’t feel pressured. We also had more support and meaningful education.”
“Our consultant answered questions about cases and supported our comfort level with certain factors.”
Where Families Reported Challenges and Risks
While many families described meaningful benefits, the same survey responses also revealed recurring risks. In many cases, families experience both at once, often realizing the downsides only after becoming financially or emotionally invested. For families already navigating uncertainty and hope, these dynamics can be difficult to see until they are experienced firsthand.
Increased costs
Respondents frequently described a growing gap between the costs they were told to expect at the outset and the actual costs of the opportunities presented to them through consultants. These higher costs often reflected downstream fees associated with cases introduced through the consultant’s network.
“Before we signed, we were told the average total cost was around $50,000. Most cases she sent were at least $60,000 to $70,000. We ultimately ended our journey due to high costs.”
“We gave our consultant a budget of $45,000 to $50,000, but the opportunities she sent were often close to $85,000.”
Involvement with unlicensed or unethical intermediaries
Many families, especially respondents who adopted from 2020 to 2023, reported being encouraged to work with facilitators or unethical providers, often without understanding the legal or ethical implications until after they had committed time and money.
“The big downside was that they worked with adoption facilitators, which we didn’t know initially. We matched with a case from a Virginia facilitator, but it fell apart. We lost thousands.”
“I wish the consultant had been more selective in deciding which professionals she worked with. I was matched, but the attorney was awful. I lost $37k and a lot of sleep. After that, I decided to work directly with an agency and adopted 9 months later.”
Displacement of licensed professionals
Several respondents described a dynamic in which their adoption agency or attorney played a limited role, while the consultant became the primary source of guidance and support for decision-making.
“We were surprised by how we relied on our consultant for everything except the home study. This seemed a little upside down, but we didn’t know any different at the time.”
“We thought our agency would guide us, but all of the real decision-making and case evaluation happened with our consultant.”
These experiences may signal a broader and concerning shift in the domestic adoption landscape.
In practice, many families report that consultants are now filling roles that licensed adoption professionals traditionally held. Rather than receiving education, guidance, and case analysis from the agency responsible for their home study and placement, families increasingly rely on their adoption consultant to help them evaluate opportunities, understand risks, communicate with expectant parents, and prepare both emotionally and practically for adoption.
When this happens, the licensed professional’s role is reduced to completing the home study and finalizing placement paperwork, elevating the consultant as the primary guide throughout the adoption journey.
As consultants are not required to have formal training in adoption law, social work, trauma, ethics, or child welfare, this shift places an unlicensed, unregulated actor at the helm of one of the most consequential decisions a family will ever make.
Adoption agencies are licensed precisely because adoption requires specialized training, ethical safeguards, and accountability. When agencies defer core functions to consultants, families are left navigating legal, medical, and ethical terrain under the guidance of someone who is not required to have credentials, training, or oversight.
This inversion of roles can carry real consequences not only for adoptive parents but also for expectant parents and children. When critical decisions about risk, law, finances, or expectant parent interactions are routed through an unregulated provider, the safeguards built into adoption law are easily bypassed.
Access to information is power in adoption. Families can only make ethical, informed decisions if they are given clear, complete, and verifiable facts about the situations they are asked to consider.
Yet many survey respondents described receiving fragmentary, vague, or unverifiable information about cases, even when significant, nonrefundable fees were at stake.
Taken together, these accounts reflect recurring gaps in verification, attribution, and transparency. Without meaningful information about the expectant parent’s circumstances, the provider involved, or how funds will be used, adoptive parents are left to make life-altering decisions in the dark.
When an adoptive family’s primary relationship is with a consultant rather than a licensed adoption agency, they often lose access to essential post-placement services. Post-placement support is a core component of ethical adoption practice, not an optional add-on.
Licensed agencies are built to provide counseling, education, crisis support, and follow-up care. Consultants are not. Their role typically ends at match or placement, leaving families without the professional guidance that helps stabilize placements, support attachment, and address the real-world challenges that emerge after a child comes home.
Some families may decide that a consultant can provide additional education, networking, or other important kinds of support. Those families should proceed with caution and clear boundaries. To learn more, read Questions to Ask Before Hiring an Adoption Consultant.
AdoptChange strongly encourages prospective adoptive parents to prioritize working directly with licensed, regulated adoption professionals. Licensure is an important safeguard, offering oversight and accountability, but ethical practice ultimately depends on how professionals operate in real cases. Like any regulated profession, adoption agencies and attorneys vary widely in quality, transparency, and adherence to best practices.
Families considering adoption are encouraged to look beyond licensure alone and evaluate how providers operate in practice, using clear ethical standards such as the AdoptMatch Guiding Principles, which emphasize transparency, informed consent, and child-centered decision-making.
Ultimately, the decision many families face is not simply, “Will this help us adopt faster?” but “What kind of adoption are we participating in?” Asking these questions early gives adopting families the chance to choose intentionally, before momentum and money decide for them.
Once families understand the role adoption consultants play, the next step is to decide whether that role aligns with the kind of adoption process they want to participate in. Our companion guide, Questions to Ask Before Hiring an Adoption Consultant, is designed to help navigate that decision.