Hope Cottage, Inc.

We have been a foster to adopt family with Hope Cottage for over 2 years now. We have seen them go through several transition periods and through it all they remained communicative, supportive, and professional. We have attended numerous trainings all hosted by Hope Cottage and they have always been organized and informative. We also enjoyed these times as we were able to meet other families and share our stories. Adoption is never a simple or easy process, and in our case, it can become very complicated and confusing. I could not imagine having gone through some of our foster/adopt experiences with any other agency than Hope Cottage.

My wife and I would highly encourage you to be extremely skeptical of Hope Cottage. Their trainings were disorganized (particularly the SAMA training). Their mandates and expectations of couples were not universally enforced. The communication between the staff was obviously lacking. Finally, our case worker told us at the conclusion of our home study interviews that our approval should be completed within one week from our last meeting. She was extremely supportive and specifically told us that we would be moving forward. Three weeks later, we had received no word from the agency despite numerous emails and voicemail messages left to the case worker and her supervisor. Finally, after three weeks we were told that our home study was denied because they were "a small agency unlikely to meet our needs." We had been completely open, honest, and upfront with them since the start of our process (which began over six months prior to our home study being denied). These folks are flat out unprofessional. There are several other agencies available, and we really encourage you to look elsewhere.

A very unprofessional agency. We had begun working with them for about 3 months, but we had our lawyer review their contract prior to signing. Our lawyer had major red flags, including that the documents left the adopting couple liable for an unlimited bill even if the adoption failed, that there were so many contradictions within the document that the lawyer stated "it is legally unenforceable due to vagueness". Upon reaching this, we had the contract re-written professionally (and with most things to their advantage), but to actually make the contract legal. Hope Cottage rejected this language and then refused to refund our earlier payments. Thankfully we went to a different agency and have since adopted 2 beautiful children.

Hope Cottage is an amazing agency with wonderful people. My husband and I are currently a waiting family; we feel very supported and educated by the entire staff.

I am half of a same-sex couple who adopted two children through Hope Cottage's domestic infant adoption program. We had different social workers for both adoptions, and they both did excellent jobs educating us, communicating in a timely manner with us, setting our expectations for what "timely" would mean beforehand, and being honest about difficult information. They went above and beyond mere professionalism in our second adoption due to the unique circumstances surrounding it to ensure that everything happened as quickly as possible, while adhering to strict ethical standards regarding what was best for our child first, the birth parents second, and us third (which is just as it should be!). I can't recommend them highly enough to expectant mothers considering adoption for their child, or to straight, GLBT, and single prospective adoptive parents.