Adoptions With Love, Inc.
617-964-4357
www.adoptionswithlove.org

Melissa B. Brisman, Esq., LLC
77 Market St., 2nd Floor
Park Ridge, NJ 07656
201-505-0078
www.reproductivelawyer.com
Since 1996, New Jersey attorney Melissa Brisman has helped build families. Attorney Brisman’s services include same-sex gestational carrier arrangements, locating gestational carriers, and preparing contracts for ovum, embryo and sperm donation arrangements. Her highly trained staff works closely with the intended parents and helps them through the carrier search, the organization of a home study and obtaining criminal background checks. Attorney Brisman also handles insurance reviews and completes second parent adoptions, and pre-birth orders which direct the hospital or state to place the parents’ names on the child’s birth certificate.

In December 2005, Brisman won a landmark ruling in favor of her clients before a Pennsylvania judge. The judge determined that Brisman’s clients, two men, were the legal parents of twins who were anticipated to be born around January 2006 to a gestational carrier. The judge ruled that the gay men, one being the biological father of the twins, must be listed on the birth certificates of each child as the sole legal parents, with no mother listed. In March 2003, Brisman was the first attorney to get a lesbian couple listed as parents on the birth certificate of their expectant baby in New Jersey. One partner was carrying the baby, the other provided the egg. In most cases the woman who delivers the baby is named as the mother on the birth certificate then her partner must adopt the child which could take several months or longer. Brisman is licensed to practice law in Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, and Massachusetts. With the assistance of Attorney Brisman, Steven Pollack and David McGovern of New York City, became proud dads of twin girls. Says Pollack, “Friends of ours highly recommended Melissa. From the onset we felt extremely comfortable with Melissa and her office staff.”

Carole LieberWilkins
1460 Westwood Blvd., Ste. 204
Los Angeles, CA  90024

4505 Las Virgenes Road, Ste. 217
Calabasas, CA  91302
310-470-9049
www.LAfamilybuilding.com
Carole LieberWilkins is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist in private practice in West Los Angeles, providing individual, couples and group counseling.   A specialist in the field of reproductive medicine, adoption and family building options since 1986, she became a founding member of Resolve of Greater Los Angeles in 1987 and served on the Board of Directors in various positions for the next 14 years. 

Primary services include: helping parents feel comfortable talking with their kids about how they built their families; providing required “clearance letters” for donors or gestational carriers; helping parents and donors/GCs forge healthy, lasting relationships; teaching positive family building language; couples counseling; support through reproductive medicine procedures; and resources for adoption, donor and surrogate agencies.

She has been the keynote speaker at several Resolve symposia, and a presenter at the professional meetings of the American Psychological Association, the American Society of Reproductive Medicine, Organon Nurses Symposia and Kaiser Hospitals.

In addition, her own experience creating a family through adoption and ovum donation deepens her understanding of the challenges others face when exploring these complex family building options.Carole can be contacted at: (310) 470-9049, email: familybuilding@verizon.net, www.LAfamilybuilding.com.

Children’s Aid and Family Services
201-261-2800
www.cafsnj.org
The mission of Children’s Aid and Family Services is to preserve, protect, and when needed, provide families. Since 1899, we’ve placed more than 10,000 children with loving parents. The agency is a recognized leader in New Jersey in all aspects of pre-adoption and post-adoption services.

There are more than 140 infants and children in the agency’s foster care at any given time. These children come to us having suffered from physical and emotional abuse and neglect, and having had less basic care from their families. As a consequence, they need more specialized treatment while living in the agency’s group or family foster homes to help them start to heal. The agency’s goal is to help them move on to a loving adoptive family.

The children have simple, yet profound dreams. They yearn for a family they can count on -- parents to get them ready for school every day, take them to the doctor when they’re sick, help them with their math homework, and listen to their joys and concerns.

Children’s Aid and Family Services offers comprehensive pre- and post-adoption counseling services, as well as 24 hours a day, seven days a week emergency assistance.

Family Focus Adoption Services
866-855-1919
www.familyfocusadoption.org
FAMILY FOCUS ADOPTION SERVICES is a twenty-one year old multi-service adoption agency that defines itself as "high energy and non-traditional."   

Founded and staffed by adoptive parents, social workers, and other citizens who believe in the importance and validity of adoption as a healthy life-time family builder, the agency works to recruit diverse families in the twenty-one counties from Suffolk through the Capital District, and places children from nearly all New York State counties, and other states as well.  Although the agency has a small infant program, and also assists families adopting internationally, its heart and soul, and central mission, is to find permanent loving families for the children in greatest need: the older youngsters and teens languishing in the foster care systems of New York State.

FAMILY FOCUS, which has always been LGBT-friendly and welcoming, last year began a new program specifically to recruit potential families from the LGBT communities of New York State:  IT'S TIME FOR US. FAMILY FOCUS invites you to come and learn about adoption, and we will also send a speaker to your local organization to talk about ADOPTION TODAY.

Just call the office, toll free, at 866-855-1919, or visit our web site www.familyfocusadoption.org to learn more about us, and to get the schedule of our upcoming Adoption Information Meetings.  If you want to talk about adoption, we want to talk to you!!

Forever Families Through Adoption
914-939-1180
www.foreverfamiliesthroughadoption.org
Forever Families Through Adoption is a NY and CT-authorized, not-for-profit, adoption placement agency whose goal is to find a home for every child that is eligible for permanent adoption.  Joy Goldstein is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker who counsels birth and adoptive parents and frequently lectures on adoption topics.  Michael is an attorney and social worker who assists clients with adoptions both domestically and internationally. 

After more than 25 years and over 2,500 successful placements, the Goldstein’s founded F.F.T.A. in 2007 to provide the counseling, guidance, education, confidence and comfort to make the sometimes complex adoption process, a wonderful, rewarding and successful experience.

While most of F.F.T.A.’s  babies are healthy, Caucasian infants, the founders of F.F.T.A. are well known within the adoption community for having a particular fondness for – and expertise in – hard to place children, including those who have been drug or alcohol-exposed, are black or bi-racial, are the result of rape or incest, or are the offspring of incarcerated mothers.  They also take great pride in representing many single and same sex clients, and treat all persons with the respect and compassion they deserve regardless of race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, marital status, age, nationality or disability. 

New York City Administration for Children’s Services
Parent Recruitment hotline 212-676-WISH (9474)
www.nyc.gov/adopt

Rumbold & Seidelman
Attorneys at Law
914-962-3001
www.adoptionlawny.com
Rumbold & Seidelman is a small firm practicing exclusively in the area of adoption and reproductive law in the states of New York and New Jersey.  We are members of the American Academy of Adoption Attorneys and the American Society for Reproductive Medicine.  Our emphasis is on personal attention to our clients. We have represented hundreds of clients to adopt or place their children with integrity and love. We also concentrate our practice in the evolving field of reproductive law and have counseled Intended Parents, Egg, Sperm, Embryo Donors and Gestational Carriers in collaborative reproduction arrangements. In addition to our law practice, we serve as mediators in the fields of Child Permanency and Parent Child Mediation.

Our law practice reflects our understanding that our work is first and foremost about creating families. We believe that our practice should be non-adversarial and cooperative. It should be dedicated to building secure family relationships that benefit all members of the adoption triad or participants in collaborative reproduction.   We know our clients are making decisions and choices that will impact them for life. It is our job to listen to and guide our clients based on our knowledge and expertise. We pledge to listen to you carefully, to be available to you and to assist you to make the important decisions you need to make with confidence.