Jennifer Fairfax is an adoption and collaborative-reproduction attorney licensed to practice in Maryland, Virginia, and the District of Columbia. She has helped clients adopt children who have been placed for re-adoption as well as find new homes for children whose adoptive parents have changed their mind.

According to Fairfax, “In some rare and unfortunate instances, [the adoption] doesn’t work out. It could be an older child; perhaps they have reactive attachment disorder (RAD) or some other challenge that the adopted family is unable to handle.” (Reactive attachment disorder is a condition that occurs in children who have been neglected and are therefore unable to form an attachment to their caregivers. According to the DSM-5 , RAD occurs when “the child has experienced a pattern of extremes of insufficient care as evidenced by at least one of the following: social neglect or deprivation … repeated changes of primary caregiver … rearing in unusual settings.”) In Fairfax’s experience, adoptions that come out of a foster-care placement are less likely to result in disruption. Fairfax has in some cases worked with Second Chance Adoptions.

Read: The challenge of finding homes for rural America’s foster children

As for the photographs and personal details of these children, according to Marty Shannon, the adoption-program administrator for the Division of Child and Family Services in Utah, where Second Chance Adoptions operates, providing photos falls under best practices. “What we are trying to do is show the human side of them,” she says. Kathy Kaiser, the executive director of WIAA, adds, “It’s the only way to get the word out to people that they are available.” But Richard Klarberg, the president and CEO of the Council on Accreditation, hopes that the practice will end. “The concept of advertising a child brings out the worst characters who are likely to be looking at the child from a wholly unethical and criminal perspective,” Klarberg says. “It’s a nightmare.”

According to Kaiser, the agency began the Second Chance Adoptions program out of concern for children whose adoptive parents were attempting “rehoming” on their own, posting online and potentially putting their children in grave danger. “We felt very strongly that these families were worth helping,” she says. “We opened this program because we could see that there were people that were adopting children overseas and through the foster-care system, and they were unsuccessful in parenting the child.”

WIAA’s website advises parents who are seeking a new home for an adopted child that they “will not face any court or social-services recriminations, because this is a legal and appropriate way to help a child be adopted a second time.” WIAA goes on to explain that if the agency and placing family agree to enroll the child in the program, “the only fee you pay for our services is $1,500.” After that, the placing family will also need to hire an attorney in their state of residence in order to complete the process. “We are very regulated by the state of Utah,” Kaiser says. “Everything is on the up-and-up.”