No news

We are still waiting for our dossier to be submitted to the State Department of Adoptions. It's hard not knowing when we'll be going to Ukraine. In most cases people get an appointment date in about 3 months after dossier was submitted. For example, one family submitted on April 30th and found yesterday that their appointment is July 26th. However, another family submitted on February 19th, and also found out yesterday that their appointment is at the end of July. So we'll wait and see.

Adoption process in Ukraine

The process to adopt from Ukraine is very long, tedious and nerve-wrecking. It involves many steps, a lot of paperwork and a lot of red tape. One of the frequent posters on the FRUA (Families for Russian and Ukrainian Adoptions) chat board wrote her own humorous version of the process and gave her permission to use it in my blog. Thank you, Beth2!

Here it is:

- First, you have a homestudy done and do a lot of paperwork to get approval from your state.

- Then you do a lot of paperwork that costs a lot of money and takes a ridiculously long time to get approval from our federal government.

- Then you send a bunch of paperwork to Ukraine to get translated and you wait for it to get submitted to the Ukrainian adoption officials in Kiev.

- When it finally gets submitted, you wait for your initial approval in Ukraine. If you get that approval, you get an appointment to come to Kiev. You have to go when they tell you to go. You don't get to decide the appointment time.

- At your appointment, you get a referral for a child or a sibling group of children according to your homestudy. You go to the region where the kids are and seek local approval to adopt them, praying for a court date within the near future.

- If all goes well in court, you wait 10 more days and do more paperwork within the Ukrainian system. When that's done, you go back to Kiev, get medical exams for the kids for our government and give our government even more money to get visas allowing you to bring the kids home.

Then you come home and the real adventure begins.

The waiting game

Now that our dossier is in Ukraine, we just have to wait until our facilitator is able to submit it to the State Department of Adoptions. During the last several weeks they accepted only 5-7 dossiers a week from American families. Knowing that there are more than 200 families waiting in line to submit, it may be a long time to get to the front of the line. Most facilitators have multiple places in line. Some of them don't even have the dossiers to submit yet, but they are trying to be proactive so that by the time they get to the front of the line they will have a dossier to submit. Some of them already have a dossier ready, but the place in line is far from the front. So it varies in each individual case. Our facilitator has several places in line (I don't know the numbers though), so I really hope he'll be able to submit it soon before our documents start to expire. This past Monday several people pushed their way ahead of the line and submitted the dossiers out of order. There was even a physical confrontation there!

Also, I heard that a director of SDA was finally appointed yesterday. The previous director resigned 2 months ago, and since then SDA was operating with interim director and understaffed. I feel optimistic that the new director is the good news for all prospective adoptive parents :)

Delivered!

Dossier in Paris

It's so neat to be able to track the Fedex package. This morning our dossier departed the Fedex location in Paris, France. I wish I was there too...

What's next?

Now we wait. And wait. And wait again. Basically once our facilitator receives our dossier, he should submit it to SDA. This sounds easy, but it's not - as I mentioned in my previous posts, there is a line for each country in order to submit a dossier. One facilitator can only submit one dossier at a time, the only day when they allow submission for American citizens is Monday, and only from 2 to 4 pm. Last several weeks they accepted anywhere from 5 to 7 dossiers a week, so the line is moving very slowly.

Once this step is done, the SDA begins the review process. If everything is in order, we'll get an appointment date to come to Kiev and meet with the head of adoption department. Officially it takes 20 working days to get an appointment date, and the date used to be about 3 months from the date of submission. But lately it's more like 30-40 working days to review the dossier, and the appointment date about 4 - 4.5 months from the date of submission. For example, people who submitted in January were notified in February about their April appointment. I heard about one family who submitted on March 5th, and found out yesterday, May 8th, that they have an appointment on July 17th, which is 4.5 months after submission.

We were planning for a May submission and August travel date, but looks like we'll be traveling later. This is both good and bad news. The good news is that the airfare goes down dramatically in September. The bad news is that Raisa won't be able to start the school year from the beginning. Also, we won't be able to swim in the Black Sea :)

During appointment at SDA people are usually given several profiles of kids available for adoption. In our case we know who we are adopting, but the rules are the same. Raisa should be available for adoption (i.e. be on the national adoption registry), and we have to physically come to SDA for the interview. After the interview we get our paperwork back (with more stamps :) and go to Odessa to start preparations for the court. This step is not easy either. It requires more paperwork, which should go from Odessa to Kiev to get the approval of SDA and then back to Odessa.

After the court we wait mandatory 10 days during which time appeals to the court decision can be filed. If nobody files the appeal (hopefully not!) we get the court decree, race to get a new birth certificate and a passport for Raisa and go to US Embassy in Kiev to get the visa. Then the three of us we'll fly home!

Dossier is on its way to Ukraine!!!

We ended up driving to Albany again as we needed 2 more apostilles, but didn't have time to do it by mail. But as of today our paperwork is in the hands of Fedex and should be in Kiev by May 15th. I still can't believe it :) I expected the postage to cost about $50, but since our dossier's weight was a little bit over 1 lb, it cost me $95 :( Oh well, it's nothing compare to our overall costs :) We'll survive!