SERVICES:

How the Conception Connection™ Registry Works

The Conception Connection helps LGBT individuals or couples find a person of the opposite gender with whom to conceive a child, and helps negotiate agreements between or among those persons.

Assessment Meeting

At this two-hour meeting we will talk about your specific visions for your family and discuss what is involved in the various kinds of relationships you can have with a donor, recipient, or co-parent.

We use a tool called “The Spectrum of Involvement” to identify and give examples of different ways Conception Connection Partners can be involved in the lives of the children they conceive together.

To register with Conception Connection, call Alternative Family Matters at (617) 576-6788 to arrange an assessment meeting with the coordinator. Clients who live far away from Cambridge, MA can arrange for their assessment meeting to take place over the telephone. The fee for this initial meeting is $200.

Enrollment

If you would like the Conception Connection Registry to help you find a person of the opposite gender with whom you can conceive a child you will be asked to complete a Conception Connection enrollment packet which includes:

 

A Participant Cover Sheet- contains all of your identifying information but is only seen and used by the coordinator.

A Participant Profile –contains information about you, the kind of arrangement you are seeking, brief family social and medical history, and other information that will be shared with prospective Conception Connection partners. No identifying information is contained in the profile that is circulated to prospective partners so that your anonymity is protected until you have agreed to be contacted by an interested Conception Connection participant.

A Participation Agreement- This explains all of the fees involved, the services you can expect from Alternative Family Matters (AFM), and what AFM expects of you.

A check for $800 is required to participate in the Conception Connection Registry. $400 dollars of this fee will be refunded to you if we have not found you a suitable partner within 9 months.

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Finding a Conception Connection Partner

We employ the following outreach strategies:

Contact all the “wanna-be-moms/dads” in AFM’s data base who are in the appropriate geographic area and have expressed a desired level of involvement that is compatible with yours.

Create a short advertisement that anonymously describes you and the arrangement you are seeking, post the ad in geographically and socially appropriate newspapers, list serves, and bulletin boards, listing AFM’s email and telephone as the contact entity.

Send this notice to appropriate community-based organizations and professionals such as therapists, attorneys, and community organizers.

The Conception Connection coordinator responds by telephone and email to all inquiries generated by the abovementioned outreach strategies. In her response she informs the respondent about the service and asks them to complete a written profile. She emails them information about The Conception Connection, about you and the situation you desire, and The Conception Connection Profile for them to complete and email back to AFM.

If and when she receives the profile the coordinator will spend additional time with the respondent on the telephone and, if appropriate, send you a copy of her/his anonymous profile.

If you approve of the profile and are interested in talking directly with the respondent, the coordinator will send the respondent your anonymous profile. If she/he agrees the coordinator will provide each of you with each other’s names, telephone numbers, and email addresses so that you can contact one another directly. The coordinator will also send you several pages of Conception Connection Etiquette to help you engage in the most productive interactions with potential partners.

Our goal is to provide you with profiles of six possible candidates within nine months.

It is expected that you will engage in several email, telephone, and direct meetings with potential partners that appeal to you after the initial contact. It is expected that you stay periodically in touch with the coordinator to keep her apprised of your feelings and reactions to the various candidates you meet.

When all parties agree that you all have good Conception Connection partner potential you will each talk again with the coordinator who will the create the first draft of a donor/co-parenting agreement that attempts to capture your vision of your arrangement.

A $1500 payment to AFM is expected at this time.

; If, after reviewing an initial draft, either party feels dissatisfied with the arrangement described in the agreement or with the other parties involved, the coordinator will insure that all parties are aware that that match is not going to work out and will continue the initial outreach strategies to find additional potential candidates.

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Finalizing the Agreement and Beginning Inseminations

If all parties are comfortable with most of the first draft, they will meet with the coordinator to review the initial draft and determine changes and modifications. Other issues to discuss include:

Medical screening for all parties

Ovulation prediction

Insemination options and logistics

Referrals to appropriate lawyers, medical providers, and other LGBT parents whose family arrangements are similar to the one for which you are preparing.

The coordinator will make the appropriate modifications to the agreement. Each party to the agreement is encouraged to review the final agreement with her/his own legal counsel to insure that each party is absolutely clear about the implications of each aspect of the agreement and that the document accurately reflects each party’s intentions and understandings.

The final agreement is signed by each party and an official notary.

A final payment to AFM of $1000 is expected at this time and inseminations can begin.

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Additional Involvement

The Conception Connection coordinator is available for support, guidance, and periodic “reality checks” throughout inseminations, pregnancy, and thereafter.

Reasonable Expectations

The Conception Connection believes strongly in the critical importance of creating a detailed, written donor and/or co-parenting agreement which clarifies and articulates what each person involved in the family arrangement expects of each of the other persons in terms of specific levels and modes of involvement with the child and with the other family members. Areas of clarification include but are not limited to decision-making, financial involvement, daily care, custody, visitation, and plans for cooperatively managing any changes of heart, mind, or circumstance that could occur during the child’s life.

Developing custom-designed donor and/or co-parenting agreements is AFM’s area of greatest experience, insight, creativity, and expertise. Conception Connection staff can recommend attorneys with experience and interest in these unique documents and situations, to provide Conception Connection clients with final legal review and recommendations.

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If CC clients do not employ AFM in this process they will be expected to sign a statement confirming that they were offered the abovementioned counseling services from AFM and elected not to utilize those services.

The Conception Connection Coordinator employs and documents her best judgment, professional tools, efforts, and experience to evaluate prospective partners. This expertise, however, cannot guarantee the physical or mental health of any CC participant or the quality of any CC relationship that ensues. Conception Connection clients are expected to employ their own standards, experience, and instincts to screen and evaluate the viability of prospective partners.

 

The Conception Connection Coordinator documents all of her efforts to get the attention of and respond to potential partners. Concurrently, there is no guarantee that the Conception Connection will succeed in finding a CC participant who satisfies your criteria or that you will be contacted by appropriate CC participants. $400 of your $800 finders fee deposit will be returned if we have not found you a satisfactory partner within nine months.

 

As a Conception Connection participant you agree to allow your anonymous CC profile to be made available to any and all other CC participants, and to allow your name, email address, and telephone number to be given to registered CC participants whose profiles you approved.

 

The Conception Connection expects all participants to tell the truth on all forms including their Participant Profile but cannot guarantee that this is the case. The Conception Connection expects all participants to respect the privacy of other CC Participants and to refrain from disclosing the names, phone numbers, or addresses of any other participants with whom they come in contact.

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Counseling Services for Unrelated Men and Women Who are Planning to Have Children Together

©Jenifer Firestone, Alternative Family Matters

Having conceived and now raising my 11 year-old daughter with a gay couple, I am intimately familiar with the satisfactions, frustrations, joys, and drawbacks of these unique and complicated lifelong relationships. Before trying to conceive, my daughter’s fathers and I spent two years discussing, researching, and putting to paper the innumerable issues, possibilities, concerns, and visions involved in raising a child. While the process was tedious and costly, that high level of detailed discussion before we had her, enabled us to anticipate and therefore avoid potential conflicts, and acknowledge those aspects of our personalities and relationships that would be involved in cooperatively making our way through future problems that could arise.

I started the Conception Connection Counseling Service to expedite and lower the cost of this essential alternative family planning process without sacrificing comprehensive coverage of the issues, eventualities, and interpersonal considerations.

I believe that the current outbreak of custody disputes between divorcing lesbian mothers results, in part, from a lack of detailed, discussion about issues and potential problems, planning for the remote possibility of changes in the parents’ relationship with each other, and a witnessed commitment to the integrity of a cooperative and permanent co-parenting relationship. I do not want to see similar disasters befall children of deliberately chosen, but unrelated moms and dads.

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When consulting with prospective parents who are planning an arrangement like yours, some of the tasks I plan on accomplishing include, but are not limited to, the following:

 

¨Confirm your compatibility in terms of respective levels of involvement with the child.

¨ Confirm your compatibility in terms of values and views if some shared parental involvement is intended.

¨ Clarify your reasons for having your children in this particular way and with this (these) particular person (people).

¨ Clarify your time lines.

¨ Review and react to existing donor or co-parenting agreements.

¨ Identify modifications to these documents to customize an agreement to your situation.

¨ Draft the details of your written co-parenting or donor agreement.

¨ Discuss specific details of medical screening including a thorough family medical history, laboratory tests, and, if desired, referral to an LGBT-friendly clinic offering a specific protocol for assisting LGBT’s through a medical self screening process.

¨ Review logistical issues such as ovulation prediction, insemination options, emotional stresses, possible fertility testing.

¨ Pursue referrals to other LGBT parents and donors who are raising children in situations similar to yours and who are willing to talk with you about their experiences and concerns.

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Consultations are arranged in a variety of ways. Local clients meet with me for 3-6 two- hour sessions, succeeded by follow-up phone calls as needed. Out-of-towners have similar meetings by long-distance conference call or they come to Boston for 1 or 2 full-day sessions, also succeeded by follow-up phone calls as needed.

By the time our consultations are completed, each party to the agreement will have a comprehensive written document, reviewed, modified, and notarized by their respective attorneys. You will have clarified your specific plans for medical screening and inseminating. You will have spoken with other parents in arrangements similar to yours and identified some sort of process, ceremony, or event to enable selected family and friends to witness the spirit and intentions each party has for conceiving and possibly raising your child(ren).

My fees are generally $100 per hour with a cap of $1000 per family. This Alternative Family Planning Process combines the essential legal, medical, logistical, informational, and psycho-social dimensions involved in the creation of our unique, but somewhat risky family arrangements.

We recommend that each party to the agreement present the resulting document to her/his attorney for review and comment. This approach is far less costly than having one’s own lawyer create an original document that might not be as creative and all-encompassing as the ones I facilitate.

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Given the enormity, permanence, emotional complexity, and hybrid nature of these kinds of families and relationships, planning and documenting the familial intentions of all parties involved is not the place to cut corners. I urge you to spend the time, money and energy on an Alternative Family Planning Process that recognizes just how alternative our families really are. Investing in a family viability policy for your child (ren) is your first parental responsibility. In so doing, it can save you a significant amount of time and money, and afford you the peace of mind a parent can really appreciate.

I can be reached at (617) 576-6788 and I look forward to hearing from you.

With great expectations,

Jenifer J. Firestone, LCSW

Alternative Family Matters 5/05

CONTACT:

WEBMASTER@alternativefamilymatters.org
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