If you think adoption is a straightforward process, talk to Sandra Webb. She’s helped couples become parents through Children’s Aid and private and international adoptions for the last 13 years.

Back in 1997, the now 56-year-old from Cobourg, Ont., drove with a Quebec couple for eight hours through a cold Russian winter day to meet their child in the hallway of an orphanage. She joined them the next day in court where they legally adopted the baby.

Yes, that was a little unusual. But it’s her job to prepare prospective parents for the unexpected and the trying, as well as the wonderful.

As an adoption practitioner, she doesn’t normally trip around the globe — although she did go to Russia twice — but spends her time talking with prospective parents as part of the home study portion of an adoption.

Once a couple’s (or single person’s, if that’s the case) paperwork is in order — police checks, fingerprint checks and medicals — and once they’ve completed a special adoption training course, she evaluates them as possible parents. She meets with them at least four times (one interview is always in their home) and collects reference letters from friends and family. The process takes around three months and at the end she prepares a report.

“Yes, it’s my job to assess them, and their big concern is whether they’ll be approved,” she says. “But part of my job is education.”

She prepares families for that first meeting with their child and the potential cultural issues when the child comes from a different racial background.

Doe she ever “fail” families? “If it was a decision not to adopt, we’ve made that choice together,” she says. That’s only happened once or twice.

After a child has been adopted, she also does followup visits according to the type of adoption (with China, for instance, the final one is 36 months after adoption).

Webb had a degree in child studies from the University of Guelph when she moved to Cobourg to get married in the early 1970s. She got a job at the Children’s Aid Society there, as an intake worker. She eventually started doing some work there with adoptions of crown wards, and loved it.

In 1995, after working on and off for Children’s Aid, as well as doing some work in private adoption, she officially went into private practice as an adoption practitioner.

She does this half the time and the other half she offers therapy, mainly for families who have adopted and who are struggling. She gets to see it all: the frustration of waiting for a child, the joy of having one finally arrive, plus the challenge of building a brand new family.