Adoption Update #6

Haiti Family Program Update

April 2, 2015

Dear Families,

Happy spring!  It is so nice to see the flowers blooming and the weather getting warmer. 

Just a short update on a few things happening in Haiti

1)      According to the new protocol regulations of IBESR, post adoption reports will now be required at the following intervals and sent with translations to IBESR.  IBESR is now requiring 9 reports over an eight year period unless the child reaches age of maturity before the 8^th year (age 18).  These reports are as follows: 

·       Social worker written reports at 6 months, 1 year, 2 years

·       Reports at 3 year, 4 year, 5 year, 6 year, 7 year, and 8 year which may be completed by the            family and submitted to their agency to send to Haiti

·       Each report in addition to either the social work written/family written report must also        include a medical report and report from school (if child is school age) along with photos of the child with adoptive family

·       Each report must be translated into French.  Families will have the reports translated into French as with their dossier and sent to CAS to submit to Haiti.

·       These are the required country reports going forward for families adopting from Haiti.  Families will receive specific instructions from our post adoption department once they have arrived home with their child/children. 

2)     Effective immediately, families submitting dossiers to IBESR will be required to fully authenticate six documents instead of the previous four. The documents which must be fully authenticated are psychological evaluations on both adoptive parents, home study, powers of attorney, letter of introduction to IBESR, medical evaluations with lab results attached and the USCIS approval letter. 

3)     According to the new quota established by IBESR, our agency is able to submit 12 dossiers between October 2014 and September 2015 for regular, non-special needs adoptions and 5 additional dossiers during this same time frame for families open to special needs adoptions defined as children older than age 6, sibling group adoptions, or children with medical special needs.  We are closely monitoring the number of families in the program to ensure that as we receive dossiers we can submit them without delay to Haiti. 

4)     For those families who have registered dossiers with IBESR, our agency representatives in Haiti check with IBESR on a weekly basis to see if any registered families have received a match.  IBESR continues to move slowly with the official matching process and have indicated they wish to clear up the backlog of dossiers submitted prior to October 2014 when the new regulations took effect before moving forward with applications submitted after October 2014.   We continue to anticipate that once your dossier is registered with IBESR the wait time for a proposed referral is between 12-24 months.  The last three CAS families that received matches each waited between 12-13 months from registration of dossier at IBESR.  Those families who are open to older children/sibling groups may receive matches sooner due to the delay with IBESR and the children at the crèches getting older.  

Please feel free to contact us if you have questions about this month’s update.

Tania Griasnow

Angela Jackson

Program Coordinators for Haiti program