Open Adoption & Family Services
Open Adoption & Family Services (OA&FS) supports people in exploring all of their pregnancy options. When the choice is adoption, OA&FS facilitates adoptee-centered open adoptions. OA&FS helps prepare potential adoptive families to parent through adoption, including in-depth education on a range of adoption-related topics. OA&FS supports biological and adoptive families plan adoptions and build and maintain healthy, long-term relationships that address the ongoing needs of the adoptee.
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Why work with us?
We are a nonprofit, pro-choice agency and are not affiliated with any religion. All-options counseling is central to our mission, and we offer support and resources for each option: abortion, parenting, and adoption.
All-options counseling
We provide a compassionate, nonjudgmental space for people to talk about their thoughts and feelings. We treat each individual with dignity and respect as they explore all their options. We’ll ask questions and share information to help each person we work with make the choice that is best for them. Counseling is available to everyone regardless of immigration status.
What is open adoption?
In an open adoption, birth parents choose the adoptive parents for their child, and they build a relationship in which all parties are valued and the child’s needs are at the center.
Meet waiting families
Each family in our waiting family pool values openness and wants an ongoing relationship with their future child’s biological family. Our families are carefully screened and undergo an extensive education and preparation process to ensure they feel ready to parent a child in an open adoption.
Our mission
At Open Adoption & Family Services we support people in exploring all of their pregnancy options in an atmosphere of dignity and respect.
When the choice is adoption, we facilitate child-centered open adoptions. We assist birth and adoptive parents as they create healthy, long-term relationships that address the ongoing needs of the child.
What we believe
It’s essential to evolve our services and adoption practices by listening to the voices of all members of the adoption constellation. It’s important that we as adoption professionals reflect on our hopes and values around changes that are still needed. As we look toward the future:
- We support adopted people’s right to information about their adoption, including their original birth certificate.
- We believe it is critical to support services and programs that help break down barriers to parenting, including affordable housing, quality childcare, education, and mental health services.
- We believe it is critical to advocate for reproductive justice and access to abortion.
- We must actively work to undo systems of oppression, including racism, that have played a role historically and currently in the field of adoption and child welfare.
A note on privacy: At OA&FS, we recognize the importance of adoptees having agency over their stories. In an effort to protect these stories and the privacy of the people we work with, OA&FS will only share photos of adoptees with their permission once they are old enough to approve of these photos being shared.
Reproductive rights are human rights
Because pregnant people’s options are now more limited due to the overturning of Roe v. Wade, access to unbiased all-options pregnancy counseling is critical. Providing this service is central to our mission. We will continue assisting people in making informed decisions about their pregnancy and accessing the resources they need for whichever pregnancy decision they make: abortion, parenting, or adoption.
Your gift is greatly appreciated
Free all-options pregnancy counseling has always been at the heart of our mission. We believe that all pregnant people should have access to unbiased reproductive health choices and meaningful support for whichever path they choose: abortion, parenting, or adoption. Help us continue to provide the unbiased support that people facing unplanned pregnancies need. Every dollar makes a difference.