Perumom

CaptainSerious

@perumom

I just saw your announcement post down below, and wanted to introduce myself.  I adopted two sons from Peru.  We brought M home in July 2010 (started the process in March 2008).  While we were there, we met J, and in January of 2011, we began the process of bringing him home.  That dream came true in March of 2012.  Since then, we've been living the happy vida loca.

So, we've gone through the process twice.  I'm very open about our situation, and would be happy to answer any questions you may have, or just chat about Peru, adopting from there, the culture, the process, the roadblocks, anything you may want.  Also, feel free to look back through my posts, and you can see a lot of our story.

I'm off to read more of your blog!

perumom

Oh my God!!!  It is soooo great to hear from someone who has done this already!!  We have had no luck finding someone who can guide us a bit in a process we are sooo brand new to.  Of course google didn't help either, we found a few blogs and info sites but most of them were from a while ago which made us question the country we were about to adopt from.  We are almost done with the mountain of documents that Peru requires and its exciting to turn it over to the agency for them to do their thing.  We still have questions.....many many questions!  Thank you so much for offering some words of advice and being open about sharing this very particular wisdom with us:).  We certainly would appreciate it!  My very first question is which agency did you use?  I say first because we truly have a few and I hope I don't make you ban me from the site for being a pest with them 

Thanks so much for reaching out!!!

CaptainSerious

We used Carolina Adoption Services, but their license was not renewed by Peru when it expired last year. CAS used to do both, matched and waiting angels adoptions, and I think the Peruvian authorities are going to start limiting US adoptions to only waiting angels, at least for non-Peruvian/-Mixto families. This seems to be in response to the authorities' belief that, no matter what Americans say they are open to, they really only "want healthy babies.". VH may remain an exception, as the longest-standing American agency in Peru, they are sometimes afforded greater privileges.

I saw in your blog that you were born in Peru; that should make your process a bit smoother than most other Americans. Do you mind my asking, did you grow up there? I ask because in your writing it sounds like you see Peru as a foreign county, and was wondering how long you have been away. I hope you don't mind my asking.

As for me, I could talk about adoption all day, especially older child addition. Feel free to ask away, without worrying about scaring me off. There's little chance of that!

perumom

I was born in Lima and I lived there until the age of 11.  I still have family there and my parents still have a home there.  We go back often but in the blog I wanted to put as much information on Peru for someone else considering.  I also feel I am seeing and experiencing a side of my country I am not or ever was familiar with (adoption) so this IS very new to me.  When we were considering adoption we thought of domestic adoptions first, then friends of ours living in AL (where VH is located) mentioned seeing a commercial for Peru adoptions and we knew that was going to be the place:).  

Villa Hope has been great to work with so far but I guess we are at the first stages of dealing with them since we are just about to send them all the docs they need for our dossier.  So I guess we'll see if that holds true:).  I have two questions for you.  Did you have a hard time finding a psychologists and psychiatrist to do the Peru required evaluation?  I have to say that has been the hardest thing so far.  Also was Peru super strict about what they wanted to see in it.  We followed the directions that we received from VH but who knows if we have all the info.

How long did it take from when you submitted all your documents to them compiling your dossier and it going to Peru and being approved?  

We are hoping to get it all there before the christmas breaks, because, as you probably already know, Peru does little work during the christmas holidays:(.  God love them but they drive me crazy around that time   

)

Again thank you so much for answering some questions.  I have also been reading your posts from the very beginning and I am seeing the similarities:).  I spent like 2 hours reading them yesterday and I left off right before your second adoption:).  I will read more tonight:)  SOOO helpful!

CaptainSerious

Wow.  Reading all my posts at once must make me seem even more manic than I felt going through the process over time.  I really put everything out there; this board was my support system all through the process and after, as I'm sure you can see.  I couldn't really talk about adoption stuff with people in my real life, because no matter how supportive they were, they just didn't get it.

Thanks for answering my question about your background.  I think it's awesome that you are able to adopt from your birth/first country, especially as you know, the need there is so great.  It will be a wonderful way to enrich your children's cultural heritage.

The first time we adopted, we did have to call around a bit to find someone who would do the psychological for us.  No one around had ever heard of such a report, so most psychologists were understandably uninterested in performing it.  We found a woman who works with children and often testifies in CPS/child abuse/termination of parental rights cases, and although it was completely new to her, she was open to trying.  She met with us several times, together and seperately, and administered the MMPI (or actually the MMPI-2, I think).  She charged us an arm and a leg (close to $7K, I think), and wrote the report.  She was open to revisions from us and the agency/our lawyer in Peru, provided she agreed with the changes.

We had an outline of several questions that the report should address from our agency, and were told we had to take the MMPI/MMPI-2, or something substantially similar.  That first time around, we didn't have to have a psychiatrist's report.

When the Peruvian authorities issued an observation because of our lack of known infertility, we had to submit another report from the psychologist in response to their question about our "phobia of biological children."  That meant meeting with her again, and another $3K.

By the second time we adopted, we had been seeing a (different) family therapist regularly with our oldest son.  She administered the MMPI-2 (we were told we had to retake it), and wrote the report for us for a substantially smaller sum, but that's in part because we already had a relationship with her, and were seeing her regularly in sessions covered by insurance.  (Insurance told us that they wouldn't cover any costs of the adoption process.)

We did not have to submit a second psychologists report during our second adoption process, but we did have to have the psychiatrist's report.  Our therapist asked around for someone who might be willing to do it, and referred us to a psychiatrist who met with us each separately and wrote a brief certification for us.  Each cost about $350, if I recall correctly.

I'm not sure that Peru was super strict about what they wanted to see in the reports, but they did require the personality tests and I think it gives them wide grounds for issuing an observation, if they are inclined to do so.  I'm not sure how it will work with you being Peruana, but we had to respond to the infertility question the first time, and even after we had successfully gone through the process and were specifically returning to adopt a child we met, we had to respond to several other observations the second time around.  It's not like they didn't know everything about us and our family and how well we were doing, between both our applications and our postplacement reports, but it's fairly standard for them to find something to question.

I put our timelines below, but they really aren't a guide.  The best advice I can give you is to expect delays when least expected.  If something happens fast or when you don't expect it, consider yourself blessed.  Things never happened when we expected.  When we anticipated delays, we were surprised with a call that things were ready/done; when we hoped for something to happen by a certain date, we almost always were let down.  I know it's so much easier said than done, but the only thing you can do is let go of any timeframe expectations or hopes, and know it will happen when it does.

The first time we adopted, we sent our dossier to Peru on February 26, 2009.  It was translated and submitted to the Peruvian authorities on April 3, 2009.  On June 17, 2009 we received their request for more information concerning our desire to adopt without having experienced infertility, and our response was submitted to the Peruvian authorities on July 15, 2009.  We were approved on September 20, 2009.  We were open to either a match or a child on the waiting angles list, and submitted a request to parent our older son on March 11, 2010.  We received his referral on April 27, 2010.  We received our provisional approval from USCIS on June 7, 2010, flew to Peru on June 22nd, received our Embassy approval on June 25th, and met him on June 30th.  We took custody of M on July 5th, and signed the adoption papers on July 13th!  Our visa interview was July 23rd, and we arrived home with M in the wee hours of the morning on July 30th.

The second time around our process was a little different, because we knew we wanted to adopt J, and decided that if he was adopted by another family, then we'd continue and adopt a child from the waiting angels list.  Since we knew all the steps, we were able to anticipate things and work a bit ahead, so our timeline was a bit quicker, overall (sorry, but I don't have all the dates of Peru's requests for more information):

January 3, 2011: Requested J's file

January 14, 2011: Applied to adoption agency

March 17, 2011: Homestudy approved!

May 18, 2011: US Immigration approved!

July 13, 2011: Dossier sent to Peru!

July 19, 2011: English-version of our request to adopt J submitted to Peruvian authorities, with promise of full, translated dossier to be submitted soon

August 15, 2011: Translated dossier submitted to Peruvian authorities

August 16, 2011: Translated, official request to adopt J submitted to Peruvian authorities

December 9, 2011:  Application approved

December 28, 2011:  Received news of J's referral!

February 24, 2012:  Traveled to Peru

February 28, 2012:  Met J again

March 1, 2012:  Obtained custody of J

March 9, 2012:  Signed adoption papers

March 22, 2012:  Visa approved

March 24, 2012:  Flew home

************************

Am I correct in thinking that you plan to adopt a child from the waiting angels list?  If so, do you have access to the list already?  May I ask what your parameters are?

perumom

Well I managed to read all your posts and I am amazed at how similar the experience and emotions of your first adoption are to ours.  Actually we are open to sibling groups so I guess it is somewhat from the waiting angels.  However during our home study, because we are still a military family and our insurance is not the greatest, our social worker suggested that many medical issues weren't going to be easily met or accessed within our community.  I am not sure if this means we will be in a longer waiting period but I guess we will see.  

We are starting to get excited nontheless.  Especially since once we turn all the documents over to the agency we only wait and watch them get things done this time.  BTW.  Was it difficult to get your documents apostilled?  Everything is notarized and ready but I'm afraid there is something I'm missing and since the place is over 1.5 hours away I hate to make another trip.  Did you send your through the mail, or did you take them somewhere? And did you have to have the form and pay for each document?  They gave me a form but I wasn't sure if that was per document. 

CaptainSerious

I'm sorry it's taken me so long to get back to you.  I was out of town several days last week and our house is being renovated, so things have been crazy around here.

No, it wasn't difficult to get things apostilled.  Since I worked in the state capital, I was able to walk the documents over to the office that did it.  I did write up a cover letter, but they didn't pay any attention to that.  I just filled out the form when I went into the office.  Since it's done by the state, this may vary, but I only needed one form for all the documents.  Getting the apostilles was actually much easier than during our first process, when everything had to be certified by the state Dept. of State first, and then by the Peruvian Embassy.  Oh, make sure to tell them it's for an adoption; they gave me a much reduced rate.  Also, I was able to pay to have the documents expedited, which meant I got them within days.  Good luck!

I highly recommend that you ask for a copy of the Waiting Angels list while you are waiting (as soon as your dossier is submitted you can submit a request to parent a particular child from the list).  If you wait for the Peruvian authorities to match you, it can take years; I've seen this happen even to families where one spouse was Peruvian.  You can request to see the file of any child(ren) on the list.  It will contain all their medical, social, and emotional documentation.  We worked with an amazing doctor who specializes in adoption and is a native Spanish-speaker.  Each time we were looking at a file, we'd e-mail it to him, he'd review it and have a telephone conference with us, during which he told us his impressions.  He'd tell us what the child's prognosis was, how likely the child was to have emotional difficulties or suffer from RAD, etc.  He was simply amazing at helping us identify children whom we felt capable of parenting.  I'd be very happy to pass on his information if you are interested.

perumom

Gosh I am learning so much from your process.  So I can ask for a copy of the waiting angels once our dossier goes to Peru?  After it gets approved right? Are there sibling groups in it as well or just single children with special characteristics?  

We are sending all of our papers for the dossier tomorrow.  Actually I'm taking them all to get apostille and then mailing them priority so the agency gets them tuesday.  I know the holidays can put a halt on a few things:(.  Also I didn't understand what had to get certified by the Peruvian Embassy?  OMG is there something else we are missing? We have had such a time with all these documents that I think if there is yet another process I will scream.  Anyway thanks again for your help and I hope you have a fantastic Thanksgiving Day:)

CaptainSerious

I'm so sorry for confusing issues by mentioning the Peruvian Embassy!  During our first adoption process, Peru needed everything certified and authenticated rather than with an apostille.  That meant that after the notary and state Department of State, it had to go the the corresponding Peruvian Embassy for approval, too.  By switching to the apostille, they actually saved us a step (which was costly with overnight shipping!).

Our agency gave us the Waiting Angels list as it was updated each month once our dossier was submitted to Peru.  You do not have to wait for your application to be approved first.  If you find a child/sibling group you are interested in learning more about, you can request their file.  You should get everything MIMDES (is that still their name?) has.

If you decide you would like to request to parent a child/sibling group on the list, you should put your request in right away.  Do not wait until your application is approved first.  It usually makes the Peruvian authorities consider your application more quickly, which is nice.  Also, we saw more than one child we were considering parenting be matched with other families before we were able to make a decision and submit our request to parent.  It was always bittersweet; we were happy they found families, but sad that it couldn't be ours.

If you want to see what the list looks like, I can send you the most recent copy I have.  It's about two years old, but it will give you an idea of how it's set up.  The list is broken up into categories:  children over 7 years of age (but less than teenage), children with mental health/intellectual disabilities, children with health issues, adolescents, and sibling groups.  Unfortunately, it tells you next to nothing about the children, which is why it's so important to ask for the files.

I know some agencies try to match families to the children they feel would be the most appropriate match for them.  I'm not sure how VH handles this.  CAS didn't do any matching, so we went through the list ourselves, requested and reviewed the files on our own and with our doctor, and made the decision ourselves.  If VH typically suggests matches to families, they may not be in the habit of sharing the complete Waiting Angels list, but I'd still ask for it, as it's the way the Peruvian authorities set the system up to work.  That's not to say that the agency can't be helpful during this process, but I'm a big believer in having all the information (in this case, the complete list and complete MIMDES file for any child I'm considering parenting) before I make a decision.

CaptainSerious

Have a great Thanksgiving!

perumom

Oh my God that would be fantastic if you could send me the list.  Even if it is two years old it will give us an idea of what we will be looking at so we can be prepared and be quicker about our choices since apparently we have to be.  Great to hear we don't have to deal with the Peruvian Embassy now we are already having enough trouble with the steps we have now. @-)

I can give you an email or I guess through a message here (not sure how that works) where you can send the list to me for us to look at.  You rock!! Now I have to go back to make some pecan pies!

Happy Thanksgiving!!

CaptainSerious

Send me a private message with your e-mail (just click on my avatar, and then on "private message on the upper right). I will e-mail you the latest list I have.

perumom

I sent you a message and I hope I did it right.  I'm very new to this stuff myself :-(. Thanks again for all your help!