Agency - Adoptions From The Heart

We Build Beautiful Families. Adoptions From The Heart is a licensed, nonprofit, nonsectarian adoption agency offering services for pregnant women and families interested in domestic adoption and the field of assisted reproduction. AFTH is licensed in PA, NJ, DE, CT, VA, and NY.

Description:
Since 1985, as a non-profit organization, the mission of Adoptions From The Heart is to provide safe and loving homes for children and offer quality, comprehensive services to families, birth parents and children. Through educational, counseling and support programs, we help strengthen families, support birth parents and educate the community. The Agency’s mission also extends out into the community at large by providing financial support to families and children in need and helping to educate the public by providing trainings to hospitals, clinics, schools and social workers. Adoptions From The Heart is also very active in continuing to help draft and propose legislation in various states that will positively impact the adoption and child welfare system.

History:
Adoptions From The Heart was founded in 1985 by Maxine G. Chalker, our Executive Director. Maxine, herself an adoptee, wanted to give adoption a new face by breaking down the barriers and taking some of the mystery out of the adoption process. Keeping in mind the needs of all the members of the adoption triad, (birth parents, adoptive parents, and adopted children) she opened the first "open" adoption agency in the Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware area.
Open Adoption
Open adoption offered birth parents the ability to create a plan for their unborn children. Allowing birth parents to choose the family that they would want to raise their children, she took some of the fear and taboo out of adoption. Birth parents are encouraged to write a letter to their child explaining why they chose adoption helping their children answer important questions when they grow up and feel less like they were abandoned.
Adopted children placed through open adoption have more information on their backgrounds (medical history, who their birth parents were, why they were placed for adoption), which enables them to feel more complete.
Adoptive parents who adopt through open adoption meet the birth parents of their child and can offer information to their children about them as they grow up by answering questions that will allow them to grow up without the strong feelings of loss that a lot of children who are placed through closed adoptions feel.

Recently, Adoptions From The Heart has developed a Heartbeats Assisted Reproduction Program created to expand family building services offered to families. Heartbeats now includes a Surrogacy in India Program and an Embryo Education Series.

Contact people:

Kristy Hartley-Galbraith, Marketing Director, (phone), (email) Alexandria Peters, Communications Director, (phone), (email)

Address:

1225 South Main Street, Suite 207 Greensburg, PA 15601 (See a map)