• Job: Adoption consultant, Lawrenceville

Photos by KARL W. RITZLER/Special (ENLARGE)

When Diane Hood adopted Jacob, 14, she 'wanted to shout it from the rooftops.'

(ENLARGE)

Diane Hood has helped couples adopt children from birth mothers in the United States and from orphanages around the world.

• What I do: Diane Hood builds families. As an adoption consultant, she helps couples adopt children from birth mothers in the United States and from orphanages around the world.

Her job is to perform home studies — one of the first steps in the adoption procedure — to evaluate and educate prospective parents.

"I evaluate potential parents' fitness to become parents," said Hood, 41. That includes looking into various records — criminal, medical, financial and employment — as well as the homes and letters of reference.

As an educator, she "prepares people to be successful adoptive parents" through parenting discussions.

"I really want to prepare families for what's to come," she said. "I counsel families from personal and professional experience."

Hood and her husband, Mike, adopted their oldest child, Jacob, 14. His birth mother is a friend of a friend. They have remained in contact since Jacob's birth, but that's not typical, Hood added.

"I was the first one to hold him" after he was born, she said. She and her husband also have three children by birth.

Most adoptions take about a year, Hood said.

In domestic infant adoptions, she explained, the birth mother chooses the family for her baby from pictures and information gathered by the adoption agency. It can be anonymous, or the birth mother, child and adoptive parents can remain in contact.

The prospective adopters spend most of that year being evaluated, waiting to be chosen and then waiting for the birth. "We place the babies as soon as they are born," Hood said.

In international adoptions, she said, the prospective parents choose the children, who have been placed in orphanages because their parents are dead or because of parental poverty or cultural reasons. The wait is for bureaucracy. There's no connection with birth parents.

Hood is an independent consultant who works with Lutheran Services of Georgia on international adoptions and Catholic Social Services for domestic infant adoptions.

Since 1995, when she started as a consultant, Hood said her placements have been about half domestic and half international. How many? "Oh, my word, a lot."

• What got me interested in this: "Once I became an adoptive parent, I wanted to shout it from the rooftops," Hood said.

She got her first job as an adoption counselor by answering an advertisement from an adoption agency in Thomasville.

• Best part of my job: "I love doing post-placements," in which she visits a family after the adoptive child has come home. "I love to meet the kids."

• Most challenging part: "It's heartbreaking when a country puts adoptions on hold or closes for adoptions," Hood said. "These kids in orphanages don't know about politics."

• What people don't know about my job: "A lot goes on behind the scenes," she said, referring to the time she spends on the telephone working out countless details and on the Internet checking backgrounds as well as "the amount of time I spend praying for my families."

"It's not the kind of job you leave at 5," she said. "It takes a lot of heart."

• What keeps me going: Pointing to a collage of photos of children and their new families on a wall in her home office, Hood said: "Something like this. These kids wouldn't have had families."

Overseas orphanages typically keep children until they are 16, when they are turned out to fend for themselves and often end up in dangerous jobs, prostitution or drug use.

With adoptions, "they are in stable, loving families," she said.

• Preparation needed for this job: A consultant needs at least a bachelor's degree — and preferably a master's — in a field related to social work, Hood said.

"People who last the longest [in the job] are adoptive parents themselves," she added.

A person also needs good people skills, because "you meet such a variety of people from different backgrounds, and you build a relationship with them."

Hood has a master's degree in sociology from Florida State University and a bachelor's degree in psychology from Eckerd College in St. Petersburg, Fla.

Before becoming an adoption consultant, she taught sociology and family courses at Georgia Southern University in Statesboro and Mercer University in Macon.

She also is involved in Kidsave, a summer program that brings children from overseas orphanages to live with host families in the United States for six weeks. "The hope is to get these kids adopted," she said.

- By Karl W. Ritzler, for ajcjobs. Got an interesting job that you love? E-mail your story to jobseditor@ajc.com.

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