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Adoption
Question about IA and "matching"
I have never looked into IA, so maybe if I did, I would know this very silly question. Sorry if I ramble.
I am watching Adoption Stories on Discovery Health right now. now, these are old, but I am pretty sure it is very similar in the current day.
It seems that with IA, there is a LONG wait time to be matched. But, yet there are tons and tons of children in an "orphanages". So, assuming your age range is within the age range of the children there, why is the wait so long?
Totally niave here, but why wouldn't it just be (in a sense), "here is an approved application for a boy ages 0-3, lets go upstairs and see who fits that criteria"
I know in some countries (especially with younger children), the children have to be a certain age as all family must be exhusted, and other in-country placements must be exhusted as well.
Again, I am not educated in IA, and I hope this question does not offend anyone.
Now, I am not talking about the long wait AFTER a child is matched - this wait I can understand - legal paperwork, etc
thought?
This discussion has been closed.
Re: Question about IA and "matching"
It all varies so much from country to country, I don't know if there's a way to make a blanket statement.
I do know that back in the day, it wasn't unusual for people to get referrals from Guatemala for very, very young infants. Of course, that program has been shut down under scrutiny for wrong-doing.
If I had to guess it's a combination of paperwork and understaffing. It's not like match.com where everything is in a computer and it matches--it's all done by hand (and even with Korea, which is the oldest program, very decentralized and paper reliant. After our son's BM placed DS#2 with a different agency than DS#1, it took them quite a while to find us).
As I understand it, this is a huge part of it. When a child comes into the system in Peru, it takes about 2 years for that child to be declared "abandoned and available for adoption." The courts make sure there is are no family members or other relatives who might come forward and take in the child. If a family relations are know/discovered, they are given time to decide if they want to care for the child. The child must not be visited by any family member/relative for a certain period of time before they are declared abandoned. If a family member does visit, the clock starts over again.
Also, some families bring their children to the orphanages as a result of financial hardship, and ask that they take care of them until the family is able to do so again. These kids are not on the track to be declared "abandoned" as long as their family continues to visit.
So there are lots of kids in orphanages that are not available for adoption. Of those that are, many are special needs.
The way it works in Peru is that about each month the matching committee reviews the files of the new children who have become available for adoption. They sit down with about 20-30 files of approved families, and try to make matches. The children that are not matched within the first month or so are placed on the Waiting Angels list. Any approved family can request the file of any child on the waiting list, and can ask to parent any child on the list. Since these children are available for any approved family to request, they are not considered in the monthly matching session again until they have been requested by a family. These are the harder-to-place children, though, so if they are on the list for a few months without being requested by a family, their needs are generally pretty severe.
There are about 400 families approved to adopt from Peru. Each month, the matching sessions refer children to anywhere from 15 to 25 families, resulting in the approximately 2 year wait for a straight (non-waiting list) referral.
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I can only speak for what I know about Korea, - the S. Korean government has created a law that states a baby is only available for domestic adoption until 5 months of age. After that time is up, they are available for IA. With added time for immigration paperwork a baby doesn't come "home" until they're almost a year old.
On top of that, there's a very long wait list for babies from Korea.
Oh my, No!!!! Their are millions of orphans in this world and hundreds of thousands of them are infants (who in most cases would be healthy if not living in abject poverty). There are millions more available than there are PAPs. I believe there would be more PAPs if the various governments would not bog down the process with so much unnecessary red tape.
There are not millions of healthy newborns THAT ARE FREE FOR ADOPTION waiting in orphanages around the world. The reasons are myriad, and yes, some are political. But that idea that there are millions of children available and waiting for homes is a myth.
You are confusing me.
I believe I said hundreds of thousands of the millions of orphans are arguably healthy (if not for poverty, malnutrition, etc.) infants. What do you mean by "free" for adoption? I assume you mean available for adoption if an appropriate match is found?
This is the part that confuses me. There are 300,000 orphans in Haiti (a country of only 9 million) alone. That is not counting restaveks (child indentured servants). Are all 300,000 of those kids in orphanages waiting for adoption? No because the orphanages are full. Large numbers are living on the streets, in hospitals, etc. Our children's orphanage turns away orphans ALL the time because they do not have the room or food for them. Once a child is adopted and goes home to his family, there is an opening for another orphan which is quickly filled. There is no shortage of children needing to be adopted. There are no way near enough parents looking to adopt for all of the children in Haiti alone, let alone the rest of the world. Or am I wrong and there are literally millions of people looking to adopt each year?
I'm not going to speak to Haiti in particular, as I think CandM is more qualified to talk about the situation there... But I've noticed that the statistics on orphans throughout the world are confusing for several reasons.
1) One of the most prominent counts is done by UNICEF. The statistics by the United Nations count orphans in the dictionary sense of the term -- any child who has lost at least one parent. So they come up with the figure of 145 million orphans worldwide. "Double orphans" (what native English speakers tend to mean when they use the term "orphan"), i.e. children who have lost both parents, are considerably fewer, about 15 million.
Of the 145 million in the UNICEF count, 92 million have a surviving mother -- and we might surmise that most of those 92 million are living with their mothers. Of the 63 million who have lost mothers, they might be cared for by their fathers, grandmothers, or other relatives. Even double orphans might be cared for by family members, too... So the statistics from UNICEF are somewhat misleading and confusing because they don't give a good count of the children who are "available" for adoption by virtue of both parents being deceased or their rights having been terminated, and the child not having anyone else to care for them.
As an aside... By the UNICEF definition, my siblings and I were orphans from the time one of our parents died until we turned 18. But I can assure you that our surviving parent did a fine job taking care of us, and we in no way needed to be adopted. If we had lived in a developing country where living conditions were not great, or if there wasn't any support for our surviving parent, I know things would have been a lot tougher... but I think what is needed in those cases is additional support to the surviving parents, not adoption of the children.
2) Even children who live with relatives or a surviving parent might have a bad home situation -- e.g. a widowed mother working 18-hour days to try to feed her kids, no child care exists so kids roam the streets all day where they are at risk of victimization. Do these kids need help? Absolutely. But do they need to be adopted?
3) Further, there are children who have one or both parents living, but have been abandoned and aren't really being cared for by anyone. These children might need families, but they don't show up in counts of orphans.
4) There are also countries that don't report data to UNICEF, so children in those countries aren't included in the count.
5) Even the number of children placed in orphanages or foster care isn't a good indicator of the number of children available for adoption. Children might be placed in orphanages or foster homes but be unavailable for adoption for a variety of reasons (e.g. BPs are living and no TPR has occurred, BPs or relatives in the country visit the child and do not want the child to be adopted internationally, etc.).
I do think there are a lot of children worldwide who don't have families, and need them. I'm sure the figure is in the millions. All I meant to say by this post is, I think that most statistics collected about these children fall short in several ways.
GulfCoaster, thank you for that very well-put explanation.
This was the category our children (and large numbers of others) fell in. They met the definition of "orphan" as defined by USCIS (obviously since we would not have been able to adopt them otherwise).
This is my point. There are millions of orphans available for adoption (adding that last clause to help clarify the meaning in lieu of the varying definitions) and I do not believe there are anywhere near that number of parents adopting. Does anyone know the number of parental units (couples, singles, etc.) adopting worldwide each year? I hate it when I hear there are more parents than potential children b/c I think it is often used as an excuse why some individuals do not choose to adopt.
But are these orphans legally available for adoption in a Hague-compliant manner (which is what I mean by "free for adoption?"). From a country with an IA program? Because if the infrastructure isn't there, the whole issue is moot. It's the proverbial tree falling in the forest that isn't heard.
I know you probably disagree with me, candm, because I think I know your opinion about UNICEF, but we in the US (or developed Western world) have no entitlement to the children of developing countries, regardless of the poverty in which they are living. A responsibility from a humanitarian standpoint, yes. But not a right to import them and raise them as our own.
And that was sort of my point with the stats, too. A lot of these children may need families, but they aren't all available for adoption...
I do agree with you that we "have no entitlement to the children of developing countries." Sometimes I see people trying to justify IA by saying that "the children will have a better life here in America." That is almost certainly true from a material standpoint, but if the children's adoptions involve unethical or illegal behavior or fraud, I don't know if the children will be spiritually/emotionally better off for having been adopted.
I'm a Christian, and I do believe it is my moral obligation to provide "aid to the widows and orphans in their distress," as the Bible states. But the form of aid to orphans might not always be to adopt them. I think I do feel called to IA (for a variety of reasons), but I also feel very strongly that I ought to be supporting organizations that provide aid to children, their birth families, and orphanages too -- so that children can remain with their birth families as often as possible, and so that children who do live in orphanages/out-of-home care can have healthy and supportive experiences.
I guess what I mean by all that rambling (although I'm not CandM, who you were addressing with your post) is that I see your point -- IA doesn't solve the larger issues of poverty in developing countries, and that Americans shouldn't act "entitled" to internationally adopt children simply because they are bone-crushingly poor.
I admit that I struggled with the whole concept of IA at first. There were moments when I felt like an Ugly American, going off to country that was devastated by war not too long ago to bring home a child. However, the family registry system in Korea really puts children at an enormous disadvantage, and attitudes toward adoption aren't positive.
I am pleased to see that society is changing its view, and I do hope to see Korea end its IA program within the decade (I don't think the 2012 date that's thrown around is possible).
In domestic or international adoption, I don't think finances should ever be the determining factor as to whether a mother decides to parent her child. That may be Pollyanna of me to say, but true.
I don't think most Americans adopting internationally feel "entitled" to adopt from those countries. I think most view IA as a socially responsible way of building a family. That's the way DH and I looked at it. Yes, we could have "acquired" all of our children through conception (or at least, we think we could have), but we felt it was better to grow our family through both conception and adoption of children without a home. At least half of our friends who adopted from Haiti are in the same boat--they have bio children and want to adopt as well in order to provide a home for children living in an orphanage. I do not think children need to be adopted b/c they are "bone crushingly poor." I think children need to be adopted when they do not have a family (extended or otherwise) to take care of them. Living in an institution (as our kids did for 4 years) is never going to be as good for a child as living in a good home.
Although Haiti is not a Hague nation, there are still very strict safeguards in place. UNICEF (which is true, I am not a fan of) has played a very large role in developing Haitian adoption protocol.
I think we all agree with this statement.
I agree that life in an orphanage isn't ideal, but I don't think it's our right to demand that children--the human capital of a nation--be sent here to become OUR children.
And for many of these children, poverty IS the reason they are relinquished. Solve the poverty issue and the need for adoption goes away. Muddies the waters.
Who is demanding? Don't get me wrong, but I don't see a huge difference between you adopting from Korea and us adopting from Haiti.
There's no disputing it. But if you can change the life of a child in the meantime...
Maybe demand is a strong word (I used entitled earlier--the attitude that Americans should have access to "orphaned" children, however that is defined). But I see it on adoption forums. The whole "why can't we adopt all these children in the world who need homes" attitude--when that isn't OUR decision to make (and can be considered cultural relativism). People see the children and they WANT them (and I can't have bio kids, so I totally get that want). Not to mention the attitude that the children would be better off in the US than the are in their home country. Lots of forgetting that adoption is about finding families for children, not finding children for Americans.
Not to be crass and bring money into it, but that people are willing to spend upwards of $30k for a child demonstrates that there is a demand, and it's growing.
I expressed my reservations about IA. However, my children ARE growing up in a Korean-American family--which makes IA even more palatable to the Koreans.
I grieved for my DSs' birth mother when I got that sibling call. Her inability to parent her children--based in no small part on a cultural stigma against unwed mothers--led to my motherhood. Her deepest sorrow to my greatest joy. I can't ever say my sons' lives in the US will be better than they would have been in Korea. Yes, they will have greater access to education and opportunity than they would have had as fatherless children in Korea. But better? We'll never know. I refuse to make that statement.
We listened to a Webinar today offered to families in the homestudy phase at our agency. I actually learned a lot and they did talk about matching and some other things related to this post.
In Ethiopia, if a child is relinquished, there is a national/governmental agency (internal affairs I think) who is in charge of doing an investigation. The agency will first offer resources to the family. If the reason for relinquishment is poverty, they may offer assistance. The family may try to work on getting back on the right foot before taking the child back, or may choose to still relinquish their rights as parents. After this, the agency then speaks to extended family members to see if any one would be able to take care of the child. This could honestly take a couple of months.
For children who are abandoned, there is about a 2 month wait time before a child can be placed up for adoption. Before and after that time, the governmental agency conducts an investigation - trying to find the family of the child. Again, a process that can take a very long time - especially considering the number of orphans in the country.
The government in Ethiopia does a wonderful job in truly trying to find families and help families keep their children. Plus, agencies only work with certain orphanages, so this could also affect the matching time as they don't work with a couple hundred orphanges. They may only work with a select few - which again, affects wait time/matching. HTH!