Waiting for submission

Waiting, waiting, waiting. Our facilitator is hoping to submit our dossier in the early July - we are really hoping it will be the case! And our situation is not that bad. We know who we are going to adopt and sooner or later it will happen.

For some people it's not that easy. Since Ukraine adoption laws don't allow preselection, the families are usually presented with several profiles during their appointment in Kiev. But sometimes there are no healthy young children available on that day, so the families must make a decision - either accept a referral for the older child, or wait for another appointment. Currently, about 50 families are in Kiev waiting for 2nd or even 3rd appointments. Can you imagine how hard it is? One would ask: there are so many orphans in Ukraine, why they are not available for adoption? In order to be available for International adoption, the kids should be placed on the adoption registry: one month on the local level, one month on the regional level and one year on the national level. In theory, the children should be available in 14 months after they first were added to the local registry. But in the real life it's much more than that! For some unknown reason, it takes more than a month to transfer from one registry to another. I don't know why - it's just the Ukrainian way. So it's more like 16 - 17 months. Also, many children are lost in the system and are not registered at all! So while we are waiting for our appointment, we really hope the waiting families will find their kids and the waiting kids will find their parents soon.