Adoption Update #2

I figured I would just start numbering my updates as they come in at this point. Our adoption coordinator from CAS emailed all the waiting Haiti families today with some news. It's not really any good news, but I guess it's better than nothing. I feel more discouraged now, because there are so many steps to getting a referral and it's not guaranteed, especially if the birth parents change their mind and want to take the child back. I just don't know how much longer we can wait......I need strength. This is one of the hardest things we have ever done and our patience is being tested to the core!! Maybe this info will be beneficial to other waiting families as well:

Haiti Family Program Update

December 16, 2014

Dear Families,

We hope this finds each of you well and enjoying this holiday season.  We wanted to send out an update to all families in the program giving you some important information we have received from our representative in Haiti, Daniel. 

Daniel along with other Agency representatives, were invited to attend a meeting at the US embassy where the Consul General of the Embassy as well as other diplomatic officials, Haitian and foreign authorities such as the IBESR Director Mme Villedroin, and M. Guillame along with Mme Sawadogo the acting Hague Convention representative for Haiti were present.  Also in attendance were several judiciary officials for Haitian courts, including two Judge d’Enfants for the Port-au Prince jurisdiction, attorneys, and crèche directors.  

During this meeting, discussion was made of the progress that IBESR was making in implementing the Hague Convention.  Also discussed was ways that IBESR could be more efficient in the midst of changes to match available children to waiting families.  IBESR indicated that they are currently understaffed but are working to move through the process in accordance with Hague.  They indicated that non-Hague cases (those with I600A), would continue to be processed and they want to deal with these cases prior to processing their first Hague case.  

There is however a slowdown in the matching process of children to families, as IBESR must confirm that the child is fully adoptable.  To this end, they have instituted the following process before the child can be matched with a family.

1.      First, if the child has living birthparents they must appear twice or even three times to IBESR.

2.      The first meeting with the birthparents is for general information on adoption and what this means. They want the birthparents to fully understand the implications of placing their child for adoption.

3.      IBESR then has an additional one or two meeting with the birthparents and at the final meeting, if the birthparents are still in agreement, they sign a pre-consentment document indicating they are in agreement to move forward with the procedure for their child to be placed for adoption.    

4.      The case will then be submitted to the Judge d’Enfants which officially registers the family’s consent for an adoption (in this case an international adoption).  Once this document has been signed by parents and submitted to Judge, the parents have one month to reconsider their decision.  Once this time frame has lapsed the child’s file returns to IBESR so they can then officially match the child to a waiting, approved family. 

The process above has slowed down the matching process, as IBESR must wait until all of the above steps are completed before a child can be matched.  Also, if the birthparents change their minds, then the child cannot be placed for adoption.  As a result, the time frames from submission of dossier to being matched with a child is increasing. 

As many families are requesting young children 0-3 years of age and many preferring females, the wait for a referral will be longer.  However, we were pleased to hear from our representative that IBESR has indicated that they will be releasing the first of the New Year, a list of files of children that are ready for adoption, but for whom no family has been found yet.  These children will be older children or children with special needs.  We are hoping we can assist in finding these children families. 

On another note, crèche’s in Haiti have indicated that they continue to submit files of children to IBESR for the matching process.  Many of the crèche’s are not able to accept new children into their homes until some of the waiting children are placed.  Also, some of the children that crèche’s are caring for are not adoptable, as families sometimes due to family issues and poverty, place the children at a crèche temporarily.  This of course is putting a strain on all the crèche’s to care for the children as often a portion of the adoption fees paid by families go to support the work of the crèche and caring for the children.  

Our representative in Haiti is very proactive in going to IBESR weekly to check on the status of pending files to see if any of our waiting families have received matches.  When he has news on any of our cases, he will communicate that to your program coordinator.  Our in country representative will continue to attend meetings with Embassy and IBESR officials as they occur and update us on the continuing progress that Haiti is making with Hague adoptions.

We hope this update has been helpful in understanding the current status in Haiti and their progress towards implementing The Hague. It is a slow process, which is understandably hard for waiting families but we are encouraged to hear they are working and being provided technical assistance by our Embassy.

Feel free to contact your program coordinator if you have questions about this update.

We hope you and your family have a wonderful Holiday season!

Adoption Update

Not much news, but we decided to email our coordinator over the weekend to see if there was ANY updates regarding our dossier. She called me immediately Monday morning and we spoke, but she decided to reply to our email as well since my husband, Will was not in on the phone conversation. I'm thinking we will not receive a referral until Spring/Summer 2015 :( Below is our update:

Dear Will and Amorie,

I spoke with Amorie by phone this morning, but since I did not get to speak to Will I thought I would follow up with an e-mail as well.

As we discussed by phone, we are still waiting to hear that IBESR has approved your application and matched you with a child.  Our last matches were in September.  These two families had registered their dossiers with IBESR in July 2013 and were officially matched in September 2014.  We have not received any matches since then and continue to have Silvia and Daniel check in with IBESR on a regular basis on the status of other dossiers and matches for our families.  We have two more families that submitted dossiers in 2013 that we anticipate will receive the next referrals and then 5 families(including you), who submitted dossier in 2014(registered with IBESR in March). 

Silvia and Daniel attended a meeting last week at the US embassy regarding adoptions in Haiti.  In attendance was the Consul General of the embassy, the IBESR director, several judiciary officials, directors of creches and legal representatives of agencies.  The embassy is meeting with IBESR on a monthly basis to provide technical guidance with implementation of the Hague and to encourage IBESR to deal with the cases already submitted.  IBESR has indicated that they wish to clear up all non-Hague cases first before processing their first Hague adoption, but they did not indicate how many pending cases they had overall.    

Silvia and Daniel will inform us when your case has been approved and when you have been matched with a child.

In regards to you US immigration approval, it expires in June 2015.  You will need to request your one time free extension 90 days prior to the June deadline which requires an update to your home study.  I would advise that you begin the update process in February so that you can submit the request for extension in April. 

Your fingerprints however expire in March, so you will need to contact USCIS in February either by e-mailing them or sending to them a request to renew your fingerprints with a copy of your current immigration approval.   

I will let you know as soon as I have any news regarding your case. 

I hope you both have a wonderful Thanksgiving.  I will be out of the office starting this Wednesday but will be back on Monday.  Let me know if you have any other questions or concerns and I will be happy to talk with you.

Good news for Haiti CAS families!

We found out last week that two families from Carolina Adoption Services (CAS) received their official referrals from IBESR! It's bitter sweet news,  in that IBESR is finally issuing referrals out, and that CAS is part of that group, but sad because we are still waiting for our official referral.  I'm happy and excited for the two families. I know one of the families through email and Facebook conversations. She has been waiting for over a year, so I know she is truly excited.  Hopefully we can learn from her experience during her bonding trip, any information we may need to know for when we travel.  I'm still hopeful and optimistic that we will hear something within the next six months.  It's still really hard waiting and not knowing when things will happen. I feel like my family and friends think it's not going to happen at all lol. I tell them we just have to wait and be patient, over and over and over. I just really have no other information. :( :(

In other news, I'm busy with graduate school. I decided I needed to do something during this waiting period. I applied to The George Washington University Graduate program-Clinical Management and Leadership. I was accepted and started a couple weeks ago. All the work and reading definitely helps keep my mind off of the adoption.  Also, my sister is getting married in a few weeks, so I'm excited about that as well :)

Still no news.... :(

I feel I need to update my blog, but we still have no news on our adoption. Still waiting for a referral to be approved by IBESR.  It' been over six months since our dossier was submitted. This is waiting is the hardest thing ever!!!!!!

Donations

Our adoption coordinator, Allie Hamel has decided to take a trip down to Haiti to visit Carolina Adoption Services partnering creche Maison des Anges at the end of this month.  An email was sent out by the agency asking if anyone was interested in donating items needed for the children at the orphanage.  I think the main things that are needed are children's medicine, crib sheets, toiletries, and toddler clothes. I took a trip out to Wal-Mart and picked up a few items. Below is what we donated. Last week we drove to Greensboro to CAS and dropped off the items to Allie. It was our first time actually going to the agency, so it was kind of cool to see where all the behind the scenes decisions are made.  Then today we received a Thank You card in the mail from Allie.  When Allie returns from Haiti, she will update us on what is going on with the referrals and any changes taking place. Our dossier has been in Haiti since January 23rd and still no word on anything.  The waiting is becoming so hard......

Checking In-IBESR

I decided to email and check in with our adoption coordinator, Allie last Thursday. It's been three months since our dossier was submitted to the orphanage and I had not heard anything regarding our status.  A few days later she replied back with a little good news. Our dossier was currently in IBESR and our registration # is 00606!! Our dossier will remain in queue until it's our turn to receive a match.  She feels like referral times right now are somewhat unpredictable due to the backlog from the past few months and the new changes that were made. She is hoping that other families in our group who have been waiting longer receive their official matches soon and are invited for their 2 week bonding trip.

Outside of our adoption, we have finalized some plans for our summer vacations.  In June we are going to Orlando to attend the Family Life-Weekend to Remember marriage conference. While there we will go to Disney World.  For our anniversary in July, I managed (with a LOT of effort) to get tickets to the Beyonce and Jay-Z concert at the Georgia Dome in Atlanta, July 15th.  Looking forward to both of these trips and hopefully it will take my mind off of the adoption for a little while.

Color Me Rad-5K

Haiti adoption update break!  Yesterday, Will and I participated in our first 5K run.  We actually had a pretty fun time. The name of the event, Color Me Rad-5K was held in Raleigh, NC at the Walnut Creek Amphitheater.  It's a 5K run but they make the event fun and exciting by doing what's called color bomb.  As you run (or walk) the race, an array of colored powder is sprayed and thrown at you from all directions.  Along with that, there is music, dancing and picture taking. It's a great event!!

http://www.colormerad.com