Taiwan News: Infant with HIV awaiting adoption

I came across this article about a five-month-old boy in Taiwan awaiting adoption – he’s an HIV-carrier.  I was a little surprised by the part of the article where it says it takes two to three years to the complete international adoption process. . .really?  As I understand it, the process once a child is matched should only take about six months.  Perhaps the orphanage is taking into consideration the child’s special needs and the time it will take to find a family:

“As the center is aware that it will be difficult to get Heibao adopted in Taiwan because of the prejudices about AIDS and adoption harbored by many Taiwanese, it has decided to put the infant on a waiting list for adoption by people from abroad, even though it knows that adoption procedures usually take at least two to three years before a baby can be adopted and travel to his or her new home overseas, Chiu said. Despite being HIV-positive, Heibao is presently healthy and developing normally on a daily drug cocktail therapy, Chiu added.” – Read the full article at eTaiwanNews.com, March 27, 2009

Adoption Update: Dossier Signed, Sealed and Delivered

All of our dossier documents are now up-to-date.  I shipped them to our agency on Monday.   (For those of you unfamiliar with a dossier, it’s a compilation of official documents that will be sent to Taiwan once we have a referral – it includes vital records, medical exam forms, official copies of our home study, tax returns, financial statements, etc.)  I hate to let those papers out of my sight and wish our agency was close enough that I could just drop them off.  I tracked the package after I shipped it and was a little distressed when the delivery notice said it was left at the front door – what?!   After a brief panic and worrying over the possibility of having to re-do all of our paperwork, our family coordinator emailed and said the package would have been received by our agency’s director who was at the office yesterday.  Whew!  I feel better.   Hopefully this will be the last time we have to update this paperwork – I am hoping the next round of paperwork will involve contracts written in Chinese and information on our child in Taiwan

Adoption Update: More Fingerprints

It’s been quiet on the adoption front but we have just about finished updating our paperwork for our dossier. Hopefully we will get those documents into the mail to our agency next week and not have to worry about another update for a while.   I was surprised to receive a notice in the mail last week from USCIS with our fingerprint renewal appointments.  I thought we would need to submit a request before the expiration date in April.  I do wonder why it is necessary to be re-fingerprinted.  Our home study paperwork also required us to be re-fingerprinted.  I guess it has more to do with checking for criminal activity rather than our actual fingerprints and whether they have morphed into something else in the last 15 months.

The Changing Landscape of Adoption

A couple adopting a little girl from Taiwan was featured in the Philadelphia Inquirer this week.  The article, written by adoptive father and reporter Jeff Gamage, examines the changing landscape of international adoption and the impact it is having on families and adoption agencies. 

“In the last three years, the once-stable universe of international adoption has turned upside down, as the countries that routinely sent thousands of children to U.S. homes have limited the pool of potential parents, reduced the number of children who may be available, or closed their programs entirely.

“The big ones have all fallen apart,” said Heather Peters, director of human resources for Yoh Services L.L.C. in Philadelphia. “Vietnam’s gone. Guatemala’s gone. China might as well be gone.”

That’s pushing couples to consider less-established programs in smaller countries – a significant change in the way thousands of Americans have built their families during the last two decades.” – Read the full article at the Philadelphia Inquirer, March 1, 2009