The Council on Accreditation (COA) is pleased to announce that the US State Department has approved our fee schedule for Hague Accreditation and Approval.  From the beginning and throughout the process of developing our fee schedule, COA took into great consideration several factors that we deemed were important to adoption service providers and would contribute to a successful initiative. Among these considerations were:

1. that the fees would be appropriate to support a budget that would ensure the successful delivery of a process that fulfilled the intent of the Intercountry Adoption Act of 2000 and the Hague Regulations;
2. that the fees would not be unduly burdensome to small providers and would not result in a significant loss of money to COA; and
3. that Hague Accreditation and Approval require significantly more work and expertise in the compliance area than traditional COA accreditation.

To that end, we created a budget that incorporates all of the costs that are necessary to implement a quality program.  We considered how the factors cited in the IAA, including relative size, geographic location, and number of Convention adoptions, could be taken into account in establishing the fees, and developed a fee scale that parallels COA's traditional fees. 

As part of our ongoing effort to support you, we are offering the option of paying the accreditation or approval fee in quarterly installments. The fee, though, must be paid in full prior to achieving accreditation. We expect that this option will assist organizations and individuals tremendously.  In addition, a variety of technical assistance tools will be available. Our experience over the past 29 years has taught us that technical assistance will be a very valuable component of this project as many adoption service providers are small, have never been accredited, and are under a mandate with a shortened timeline. 

COA is extremely committed to partnering with adoption service providers in their efforts to achieve Hague accreditation or approval and we look forward to working with you in strengthening your program and improving the services delivered to your clients.

For a more complete description of Hague Accreditation and Approval fees, click here.