And, as Pamela Gordon is quick to point out, the payment of any amount of money to the birth mother can't guarantee adoptive parents a child. "According to Colorado law," says Gordon, "the birth mother can't relinquish until two weeks after giving birth. And if she changes her mind, the adoption agency doesn't absorb the loss; the devastated adoptive parents do."
In agency terms, that's known as a "disruption," and it's a way of life. Retrum says she thinks her agency has about a 15 percent disruption rate. Totta says about 12 percent of the total yearly adoptions are disrupted at Catholic Charities. Colorado's latest statistics on disruption date from 1983, when the percentage was 9.25 percent. A national study by the University of California at Berkeley places the current national rate at closer to 11 percent. Dwight Eisnach, a spokesman for the Colorado Department of Human Services, says he has no reason to believe Colorado's disruption rate differs significantly from the national average.
Small Miracles does offer "disruption insurance," a separate rate that ensures that a disruption won't mean an adoptive couple has to pay all over again for counseling and expenses. But it doesn't come cheap. To adopt under the "insured" rate at Small Miracles runs about $4,000 more than the standard $15,000 rate.
This year's legislative overhaul of the Children's Code will do nothing to loosen the agencies' grip on adoption. A look at who drafted many of the measures pending at the statehouse--the Colorado Alliance of Family and Child Agencies--makes it easy to understand why.
House Bill 1037, the 500-plus page conglomerate of amendments now wending its way through the legislature, includes requirements of even more agency counseling. It also makes homestudies mandatory for even the closest of relatives--grandparents, aunts, uncles, brothers and sisters. Judges would essentially lose the option they now have to waive homestudies for close relatives.
The proposed amendments include a provision to strengthen reporting requirements for birth-parent expenses--to ensure that they have more of a tendency to be "pregnancy-related." But there are no limitations placed on how much agencies can charge for an adoption, nor is there any cap on their profit margins. Another Children's Code bill, House Bill 1006, "allows" the Department of Human Services to set higher standards for adoption agencies, including minimal credentials for staff and specific criteria for services. But it doesn't require that those measures be taken.
Greg McHugh lauds the changes as a triumph for child-welfare advocates. "HB 1006 will allow [CDHS] to set some minimum standards, give them the needed authority to pass some rules," he says. "And the 1037 amendments mean there will be better restrictions on birth-parent expenses."
McHugh says his organization supported the birth-parent-expense reporting requirements because of complaints from court officials. "We continually hear from judges and magistrates anecdotally about exorbitant fees and charges paid by adoptive families--you know, like $25,000 or $20,000," McHugh explains. "That's ludicrous--we support good practice, not exploitation."
McHugh acknowledges that other members of the task force on adoption advised the legislature to go even further. Jefferson County Court magistrate Babette Norton "wanted to be restrictive to the adoption agencies," McHugh says. "And she wanted them to get court approval for all payments. But that didn't happen." Instead, McHugh managed to steer the legislature toward merely strengthening after-the-fact expense reporting requirements. (Norton refused to comment to Westword.)
Seth Grob, an attorney for the nonprofit Children's Campaign who also advised the general assembly on adoption, says the notion of allowing non-agency adoptions or letting other licensed professionals conduct home-studies and relinquishment counseling never came up. "No one said a word about that," he says. "I never even thought of it."
Russell George, the Republican representative from Rifle who carried HB 1037 through the House, says agency-only adoptions have been a way of life in Colorado since long before 1986. "Ever since I've practiced law, and now we're going back twenty years," George says, "there was no opportunity for private or independent adoptions in Colorado." George says that during his tenure in legislature, he's never heard anyone challenge the agency monopoly or suggest that it be changed. "Since I've been here," George says, "I don't recall anyone ever having brought it up. They must not have advocates working."
Yet many couples who have failed to adopt, or who've had trouble adopting, are hesitant to become advocates. They say that they are embarrassed about having been judged unfit to be parents or that they finally managed to adopt but don't want to rock the boat because they want to continue to build their family--and adoption agencies are the only game in town.
Some just want to forget the whole thing.
Joley Cole says she was traumatized enough as it was. "I just felt so alone and isolated," says Cole. "This was supposed to be such a wonderful event, and it was so devastating how we were treated." But because the law establishes a six-month window after adoption during which the birth mother can change her mind about giving up her child, Cole says she didn't feel safe going back and making a complaint about the agency.
Despite the lack of formal lobbying on behalf of adoptive parents, it's clear that legislators have heard about the problems with the system through their constituency. George says he regularly receives constituent complaints about adoptions. "Usually the issue is delay and cost," he says. "I had one poor family in Grand Junction, a terrible story. They spent over $10,000 in fees alone."
Those complaints, however, have failed to bring any legislative change. That's because it's the lobbyists and advocates who guide the process and control the movement of legislation, explains George. "We didn't go looking for trouble," says the legislator. "If groups came forward, then we acted.
