Adoption Update #4

Okay, so another update was sent to all the CAS families today (see below). The updates are not really any new, exciting news, but just kind of a "we have not forgotten about you guys" kind of email. I have connected with several CAS families that are waiting and we are all in the same boat. There has not been an official referral from our agency since September 2014. But it's comforting to know the other gals who are in the same agency. We are somewhat like a support group for each other. We talk through email, Facebook, and text :)

Our current home study expires in a few weeks, so my agency emailed me today with all the forms to fill out to update our home study. It's actually not as bad as I thought it would be. The worst part is having to go back to the doctor for the blood tests. The additional forms we have to submit are our taxes from last year and criminal background check. Our social worker then has to do one home visit. Again, praying that we have a referral soon!! None of this even seems real because all we have done is give money and paperwork to our agency, and we started this process in August of 2013 :( I can't wait to meet the little boy who will come live with us. 

Non adoption news - only 159 days until we leave for Maui, Hawaii!! Our 10 year anniversary trip!!

Haiti Adoption Update #4

Haiti Family Program Update

February 4, 2015

We hope this update finds your family well and hopefully not facing too much cold, winter weather.  We know some of you have been hit hard by the storms in the northeast.

Silvia and Daniel continue to check in with IBESR regarding our families who have dossiers registered to see if any have received matches yet.  They also continue to inquire about the new regulations being implemented.  If we receive word that a family has been matched with a child or if IBESR has requested any additional information, we will notify individual families.  Otherwise, families who have dossiers at IBESR continue to be on the waiting list for referral with little information available on timeframes for specific cases or status other than IBESR is working through registered dossiers.  

Our representatives did report they learned that IBESR has recently had to reduce staff due to a loss of funding. They had been receiving some financial support to implement The Hague but that funding has apparently ended and they have had to reduce staff which is causing things to move more slowly than hoped for.  As a result, we have not received a list of waiting children from IBESR and do not anticipate it for some time now.

For those families who had their dossiers already registered through our partner crèche MDA prior to implementation of the Hague convention, we are still hopeful you will receive a match through MDA depending on the children they have available that match your approval.  Silvia and Daniel are contacting other crèches to see if they have children available for adoption whose files can be submitted to IBESR.  Some of these crèches have higher fees for the care of the child and processing than MDA, so families receiving a match or referral from another crèche may have increased international fees upon referral that is due to the particular crèche where the child is residing.

In regards to those of you who have not yet completed your dossier, Silvia and Daniel have just informed us, that generally IBESR requests that documents be signed in blue ink so that they can tell that the signature is an original one.  They have not up to this point rejected any documents signed in black ink; but for future families submitting dossiers you need to be aware of this recommendation. 

We understand the changes in Haiti are taking time and that is hard for families; especially those whose paperwork is already submitted to IBESR.  We suggest that during this waiting time you continue to network with other families adopting for support as well as continue to prepare yourself through seminars, books, educational events.  Creating a Family (www.creatingafamily.org ) is a great resource for different adoption topics and radio shows.  We would encourage you to visit this site for topics of interest.  

If you have any questions about this update, feel free to contact your program coordinator. 

Thanks,

Tania Griasnow

Angela Jackson

Adoption Update #3

New update from our agency today.....

Haiti Family Program Update

January 16, 2015

Dear Families,

Happy New Year!  We hope each of you had a wonderful holiday season.  We received good news right before Christmas that we are one of the agencies that IBESR renewed accreditation to continue working in Haiti.  We are one of 18 US agencies reaccredited along with other countries including 2 in Germany, 3 in Belgium, 5 in Canada, 2 in Spain, 10 in France, 1 in Holland, 1 in Ireland, 5 in Italy, and 2 in Switzerland.  To this point, IBESR has re-accredited 49 international agencies to assist families with adoptions of Haitian children.

We were also pleased to hear that in addition to the quota of 12 dossiers per year our agency may submit for regular adoptions (children under age 5), we may also submit 5 dossiers per month for those families open to sibling groups, children over age 6 and children with special needs. We are still waiting on the list of waiting children from Haiti and are hopeful we can place some of these children with families. 

We do want to take time to remember the Haitian people this month as they remember those lost in the Haitian earthquake 5 years ago (January 12, 2010).  There were times of remembrance this week throughout the country.   There has also been some political unrest in Port-au-Prince with demonstrations related to the disbanding of parliament due to a stalemate between lawmakers and the President of Haiti.  A new prime minister has taken office in Haiti by the name of Prime Minister Evans Paul.  He is organizing the government and has stated a new electoral council will be appointed within weeks and legislative elections will be held this year. 

Due to the political climate, information from IBESR related to status of adoptions and family cases has been limited, but Silvia and Daniel are hoping to have an update on status of adoptions and particular cases soon. 

As we receive information on your individual case, your program coordinator will contact you. 

We also want to remind you to keep an eye of your immigration approval and keep that current.  You may want to contact your immigration officer 6 months prior to your expiration date if you are an I600A case to determine if you can renew under the I600A process or will need to switch to an I800A application.  

Please contact your program coordinator if you have questions about your particular case and we will be happy to talk with you.

Your Haiti Program Coordinators,

Tania Griasnow

Angela Jackson

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......