Our mission

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 parents and adoptive parents as they create healthy, long-term relationships that address the ongoing needs of the child. Learn more about our program.

Our values

Adoptee Centeredness

We strive to support practices that consider the lifelong needs of the adopted individual, recognizing that they are the only party who does not play a role in the choice of adoption. Listening to the lived experiences and perspectives of adoptees continuously shapes our understanding of these needs.

Choice

We believe that people are the experts of their own lives, and that everyone has the inherent right to choose the best path for themselves and to have access to the information needed to explore their choices. We advocate for reproductive justice, including meaningful access to support and resources.

Inclusiveness

We believe that everyone deserves to feel welcome, respected, and valued. We seek out diverse perspectives and engage in ongoing reflection as we continually evaluate and adapt our services to best meet the needs of our communities.

Openness

We assert that openness in adoption relationships better serves the needs of all members of the adoption constellation, most importantly the adoptee. We also wholeheartedly embrace and encourage openness to learning, evolving, and hearing ideas that are different from our own.

Respect

We value the unique perspective and experiences each person brings to our time together. We meet each person where they are, avoiding assumptions and judgment, and strive to provide the support that best meets their needs.

Transparency

We believe that all the people we work with deserve accurate and complete information to help them make informed choices. This also means that expectant parents and prospective adoptive parents deserve to understand the many complexities of adoption as they contemplate life-changing decisions.

Our history

Open Adoption & Family Services was founded in 1985 by Jeanne Etter and John Chally. Jeanne and her husband John adopted a child in 1978 and had an ongoing relationship with their child’s biological mother – an arrangement that was viewed as radical at that time. To the Etters, it was simply the right thing to do for their child, for themselves, and for their child’s birth family. Jeanne went from facilitating her own family’s open adoption to helping other families do the same. She and attorney John Chally formally established what came to be OA&FS. This first-of-its-kind agency was founded on child-centered open adoptions and all-options pregnancy counseling. By honoring each constellation member with inclusion, honesty, and respect, Jeanne practiced the values that ground OA&FS to this day.

Today, openness in adoption is much more common, but what it means and how it’s supported can vary among adoption professionals. Our agency has always encouraged genuine openness in which biological and adoptive families build meaningful, lifelong familial relationships that focus on the child’s needs as its primary motivator. We recognize that a child benefits from knowing all parts of who they are, and having access to all the people who love them. Preparing prospective adoptive families for true open adoption relationships through training and education is an essential part of the work we do.

Our organization has also lived our value of openness by being open to hearing what adopted people have to say and evolving our practices accordingly, including through educating everyone we work with about the realities of adoption. We understand it is critical for all people facing unplanned pregnancies to have access to choice, and our all-options counseling services are central to our mission. Most people who engage in our all-options counseling program choose a path other than adoption.