Further Down the Adoption Road

I feel like I am once again back to the brink of making a decision on the adoption.  Of course, brink for me means sometime in the next six months or so...

First, I am signed up to take the introduction course with Department of Human Services, which gets me into the foster/adoptive parents course.  Hopefully by Easter, I will be licensed and ready to be a foster parent.

On the international front, my heart is still with Haiti.  After the earthquake, I had yearned to help with the orphans, but believed that the process would take a long time to reopen.  "A long time" in a country that was 2.5 years behind under the best of circumstances, seemed to put things out of reach.

Now, however, it appears that Haiti is processing adoptions again.  Most are with children who were in orphanages pre-quake and possibly children who were placed in orphanages by parents post-quake.  If a child's parents are unknown will not be adopted until a process can be established to identify that the child is truly an orphan without family.

In short, it appears that Haiti may be an option again.  Along with this decision, I am contemplating doing an independent adoption, which means I would not have an agency.  As most international adoptions require copious amounts of paperwork, which the prospective parents have to assemble, I would not be losing anything by doing it myself.  Instead, I would be saving tens of thousands of dollars.  On the other hand, I would not have someone to help me navigate the international governmental process nor would there be someone to meet me as I arrive in country.

I have "met" online a few people who are going through the process independently in Haiti.  Many orphanages in Haiti are comfortable with allowing these independent adoptions.  And as a Non-Hague country (an international compact which governs how children are placed and accepted for adoption), Haiti has similar requirements as those countries that are Hague governed.

The big problem with adopting internationally is financing it.  So, I need to make some hard decisions on how I am going to save or generate some extra funds.  But, with an independent adoption, I would not have to save as much to get things going.