Written by Doris O’Brien

How many times have parents in a fit of exasperation told disobedient children “I’d like to send you back!” The only catch is that there’s no place to send them, except up to their room or into a corner.

Apparently, that wasn’t a problem for Torry Hansen of Tennessee. Eight months into an exhausting struggle with her adopted 7-year-old Russian son, whom she named Jared, Ms. Hansen had had quite enough. For $200 she arranged with airline personnel to see that the recalcitrant kid was flown back to Moscow and met there by someone of authority. (TV footage of Jared in Russia showed him about as fazed by all of this as Macaulay Culkin in “Home Alone!”)

A friend of mine, concerned that her young teen-aged grandson was planning to travel to Chicago alone, asked me what I thought of the little boy sent back unaccompanied to his native Russia. I said there must have been another way to handle the situation. She agreed.

But not everyone does. Another local teacher/grandmother believes there are times when a strange child gets so obstreperous as to be a danger, and that those who handled the adoption surely noticed such tendencies without alerting Ms. Hansen.

No child is guaranteed, whether adopted or birthed. And every parent-child relationship is unique. What distinguishes this one from others, however, is that it caused an avalanche of Soviet anger against America. The incident may now be old news, but it still festers, and will likely bring about changes in the Russian government’s policy for future international adoptions — if any are even permitted.

The trouble is, however, that Russia has an estimated 740,000 orphans, and the natives aren’t taking in enough of them. Americans adopted over 1,500 Russian children in 2009, the largest number after China and Ethiopia. Presumably, most of these adoptions turned out well. But whenever a problem develops, others seem to come to light, like the never-ending procession of Tiger Woods’ romantic partners.

It’s been revealed, for example, that 14 Russian kids adopted by American families have died of abuse since 1996. The fact that many American children suffered the same fate, and that even a larger percentage of orphans were abused by Russian families does not mitigate the tragedy. To some degree, we expect a higher standard of behavior from those who consciously make the effort to bring a child from elsewhere into their lives.

Finding suitable homes for orphaned kids is hard enough. But an added complication is that many Russian orphans suffer from fetal alcohol syndrome. In a past column I wrote about the excessive consumption of vodka in Russia, a dangerous habit that is spreading among our own young people. Babies born with this disease unwittingly suffer the sins of their parents, making them harder to place in adoptive homes. Often the child’s symptoms may not even be revealed for fear of rejection.

That’s basically the argument of Torry Hansen, who blames the WACAP adoption agency for not leveling with her. The agency, in turn, insists that its clients are fully informed about those they adopt, and that Ms. Hansen could have sought help from a stateside representative, rather than take the drastic measure she did. Admittedly, there is little follow-up on adoptions once a child ships out of Russia.

Adoption has always been regarded as a noble act. At its best it brings love, a sense of belonging, and greater opportunity to unclaimed children. Incidents such as the return of Jared — and the attempt of unauthorized church members to spirit children out of earthquake-ravaged Haiti — have unfairly given a bad name to adoption by Americans.

As a result of Torry Hansen’s actions, Russian agencies are keeping some 3,000 American families in limbo about the status of adoptions already in progress. Perhaps if the laws of our own land involved less red tape for adopting U.S. children, there might be fewer reasons for our citizens to face the Red Menace abroad.

For more information about Adoption or Contact Us.

Daytime Columbus Interview regarding navigating the foreign adoption process

By Jeb Phillips with The Columbus Dispatch　

Though the number of American foreign adoptions has tripled since the early 1990s and peaked in 2004, these adoptions have dropped in the past three years, declining 15% in the last two years alone. This decline is partially due to stricter adoption policies in China and Russia, previously the top two counties for American foreign adoptions.

China, the top country for foreign adoptions since 2000, has increased waiting time for adoptions to 24 months or more. In addition, the country has experienced an increase in domestic adoptions, allowing them to restrict foreign adoptions to financially stable, healthy married couples between 30 and 50 and exclude single, obese, or unhealthy prospective adoptive parents.

Russian officials prohibited all foreign adoptions for several months this year by suspending adoption agencies and are slowly beginning to recertify them. Russia, like China, is also attempting to increase domestic adoptions within the country.

Foreign adoptions from Haiti and South Korea have also experienced drops, while adoptions from Guatemala, Vietnam, and Ethiopia have increased. However, experts expect numbers in Guatemala to decrease as the government plans to introduce new adoption regulations in response to fraud and extortion claims as part of the Hague Convention on international adoptions. While the new regulations are being put in place, Americans are urged not to initiate Guatemalan adoptions.

Some experts find this decrease in U.S. foreign adoptions from previously popular countries to represent positive changes, such as increased interest in inter-country adoptions and an investigation and awareness of new countries. Others, however, view it negatively, suggesting that the changes in China and Russia reflect a trend encouraged by international children’s organizations, such as UNICEF, to care for children within their own country, even when such services are less than adequate.

For more information regarding Adoption or Contact Us.

Adoption Advice
NBC 4’s Ana Jackson talks to a local attorney about the challenges of adopting Haitian orphans.

BY BONNIE MILLER RUBIN, CHICAGO TRIBUNE

CHICAGO — For years, Americans hoping to build families through adoption looked overseas because the path was more predictable and less complicated than domestic adoption.

But in recent years, the landscape has changed dramatically, experts say.

Three of the most popular countries — China, Guatemala and Russia — have scaled back, tightened rules or temporarily halted adoptions as they struggle to establish more transparency and accountability.

Countries also have raised the eligibility bar, excluding more prospective parents based on income, marital status and even — in the case of China — body mass index.

Even if a couple manage to slice through the bureaucracy, there’s the price — which can hit $40,000 in some countries, double what it was 10 years ago and a deal breaker for many families.

“It’s never been so difficult to adopt internationally,” said Julie Tye, president of the Cradle in Evanston, Ill., calling it the most challenging climate that she has seen in a decade.

A decrease in available children has caused up to 25 of American agencies to close or merge since 2000, according to the National Council for Adoption in Alexandria, Va.

“The days of a large sending country are over,” said Chuck Johnson, the council’s vice president.

The current picture is a stark contrast to a nearly two-decade-long overseas baby boom, which started in the early 1990s and peaked in 2004 with almost 23,000 adoptions by U.S. parents. But since then, the numbers have steadily declined, with only about 12,750 international adoptions in the U.S. in 2009 — the smallest total since 1997, according to State Department data.

A major shift came in 2008 with the Hague Convention on Intercountry Adoption. The treaty — signed by 70 countries, including the United States — has been widely supported by accredited agencies as an important step in eliminating concerns of baby-selling and coercion. Such allegations were common in Guatemala and Vietnam.

Although the pact certainly slowed the process by implementing more safeguards, other factors explain today’s realities, as well.

Russia had routinely allowed about 5,000 or more adoptions to the U.S. annually, but that figure has shriveled to about 1,500 simply because the nation is in less turmoil than it was after the fall of communism, analysts say.

China — which sent almost 8,000 kids to the U.S. in 2005 — accounted for just 3,000 adoptions last year. The decrease can be attributed, in part, to a robust economy and a larger middle class, giving couples more financial stability to raise kids and afford fines for having more than one child, experts say.

“It used to be that if you met the requirements, you would have a child in 12 to 18 months … but no more,” said Tom Jackson of Sunny Ridge Family Center in Bolingbrook, Ill., and Munster, Ind.

His agency had such a backlog a year ago it stopped taking applications for its China program — and has no idea when it will reopen. In 2003, Sunny Ridge completed 84 Chinese adoptions, versus 16 last year.

And just about everywhere else, there’s a new emphasis to first look for prospective parents at home, with nations like South Korea and India pouring more resources into domestic adoption.

In fact, only Ethiopia is on an upswing. That country, which figured in a mere 289 adoptions in 2004, now ranks second with almost 2,300 U.S. adoptions.

Jackson said parents are reconsidering their options and looking at special-needs children, older children and sibling adoptions — both in the U.S. and abroad.

For more information about Adoption or Contact Us.

By CHRIS FRANCESCANI with ABC News

In the wake of the earthquake that devastated Haiti earlier this month, thousands of “Good Morning America” viewers have contacted the show, asking how they can help the many children orphaned by the quake. ABCNews.com spoke with U.S. government officials, aid organizations and non-governmental organizations to get the latest information on adoption of Haitian orphans.

Question: Can I adopt a Haitian Orphan?
Answer: No, not at present. In the wake of the earthquake that devastated the island nation earlier this month, new adoption applications for Haitian orphans are not being processed and are on hold indefinitely, according to the U.S. State Department. It’s unclear when the process will begin again.

Question: Why won’t the Haitian government allow the adoption of orphans?
Answer: The Haitian government is still in the process of identifying and registering children who were orphaned after the earthquake. In addition to concerns about child-sex trafficking, officials in Haiti need time to clearly identify a child as an orphan. Because of the number of missing and displaced Haitians, the process is long and arduous.

Question: Are any adoptions of Haitian orphans underway?
Answer: Yes. About 700 U.S. families who were already “far along” in the process are being allowed to complete their adoptions, according to Chuck Johnson, vice president of the National Council for Adoption in Washington, D.C. About 1,000 children are expected to be taken out of Haiti under the initiative, according to the U.S. State Department.

Question: What are the Haitian government’s requirements for prospective adoptive parents?
Answer: “It’s quite a lengthy and detailed process [with] a lot of very strict and rather unusual requirements that do not apply in most countries,” Michele Bond, the U.S. State Department’s deputy assistant secretary for Overseas Citizens Services, said. “You have to be married at least 10 years; you can’t be accepted as [adoptive parents] in Haiti if [you] already have a biological child, and you can’t be accepted if one parent is less than 19 years older than the child.”

So, for example, an adoption of a 10 year old would not be allowed if one spouse is 35 and the other is 28. Should prospective parents fall into any of these categories, they would need a presidential dispensation. “They would have to wait for the [Haitian] president to review your file, and then it goes to the courts there,” Bond said, adding that she doesn’t know of any other government that has such criteria. Information on same-sex couples was not immediately available, according to State Department officials.

Adopting Haitian Orphans

Question: How long does the process of adopting a Haitian orphan take?
Answer: It could take up to three or more years to adopt a Haitian orphan under pre-earthquake conditions. It’s unclear how long it would take now.

There are two parts to the process. The first part is a petition to the U.S. government to be declared eligible to adopt a child. That process, known as the I-600 process because of the name of the form, takes between 60 and 90 days, according to U.S. government officials and aid organizations. It involves a criminal background check, a medical background check and a suitability determination that involves visits to the home and interview with the prospective parents.

The second part of the process involves gaining approval from the Haitian government. That process takes two to three years, once the U.S. government approves the I-600 petition, according to U.S. government officials and aid organizations.

Question: Is that a long time compared to adoptions from other countries?
Answer: It is relatively long. Ethiopia, for example, matches adoptive parents to orphans in as little as 14 months, Johnson said, while countries such as China can take up to five years.

Question: Approximately how much does it cost to adopt a Haitian orphan?
Answer: The cost of adopting a child from Haiti can range from $10,000 to $25,000, according to Kathleen Strottman, executive director of the Congressional Coalition on Adoption Issues.

“The costs vary depending on the agency used and the services they provide (some are a one-stop shop, others do basic services) [the] State Department reports that the cost of the adoption itself is approximately $3,000 and the remaining are travel and agency fees,” Strottman wrote in an e-mail.

For more information about Adoption or Contact us.

Written by Jeff Katz, The Huffington Post

The New York Times published a magnificent story about the Heaton family of Roca, Nebraska (population 130), who are in the process of adopting two Haitian girls, ages 7 and 2. Like 900 other Haitian children just flown to the United States, these children had been in the adoption process for years, stymied by bureaucracy and inertia. Spurred by the humanitarian crisis of the Haitian earthquake, the United States has eased its visa requirements for Haitian children in the final stages of the adoption process. According to the Times story, when the Heatons landed in Omaha with their new daughters, they were “greeted by throngs of well-wishers toting teddy bears and balloons.”

I was moved by this but not surprised. The United States is the most open country in the world when it comes to adoption. In many parts of the world, blood means everything and people would never adopt outside their family. In the United States, we have a far more expansive view of family. In fact, half of all adoptions in the world are by Americans.

And it’s not just that Americans adopt. Americans adopt children that might be shunned in other countries. The younger of the children being adopted by the Heatons had a medical condition that left her brain partially exposed. The family made numerous trips to Haiti and hosted the child when she came to the United States for a medical procedure to correct the problem.

Kathy Heaton described her reasons for adopting. “We can’t think of anything we’d rather do than raise these children and make a difference.” The Heaton family is like tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of Americans, driven to adopt out of a sense of altruism. Last year Americans adopted 55,000 abused and neglected children from foster care. It is as simple as wanting to help a hurt child.

Perhaps the most interesting aspect to the story of the Haitian orphans is that it took a natural disaster of such tragic proportions to shake the bureaucracy. Many, like the two girls being adopted by the Heaton family, have spent much of their lives in an orphanage while waiting for the “system” to work. Why did it take such a tragedy to free these 900 children?

Unfortunately, there is a sad parallel between the plight of Haitian children waiting in orphanages and the 125,000 American children waiting in foster care to be adopted. That parallel is a system that too often acts as a roadblock instead of an emergency service responding to the urgent need of a child without a family.

Contrary to conventional wisdom, in the United States, there are far, far, more people interested in adopting children from foster care than there are children in need of families. Talk to people trying to adopt from foster care (and I have spoken to thousands) and you will quickly learn that there are far too many places in the child welfare system where the incentives for inaction outweigh the incentives for action. So children wait.

I have worked in this field for 20 years and I have seen countless examples of good people wanting nothing more than to help a hurt child heal. I have seen children in wheelchairs adopted. I have seen a child scarred by cigarette burns adopted by a woman who recognized those scars from her own childhood abuse. Last year I met an 18-year-old kid with “thug life” tattooed on his arms. He had just been adopted and when he spoke about his “mama” he wept.

We are blessed in this country to have an overabundance of families who want to provide homes to children in need. It should not take a catastrophic natural disaster to motivate us to sweep away the barriers that prevent children in need from having the families they deserve.

For more information about Adoption or Contact us.