What Is Happening with International Adoptions? - Weekend Wisdom

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Dawn Davenport  0:00  
Welcome, everyone to weekend wisdom by creating a family we can wisdom is our new I should say new ish addition to our podcasting channel. Our original creating a family podcast, which is still going strong is a one hour interview with an expert. So we can wisdom is a little different and we can wisdom, we answer your questions, and it's much shorter around the 10 minute mark. So today, the question we're going to ask is, What in the world is happening with international adoptions? Well, that is a big question. The truthful answer is international adoptions have been decreasing have been on a decline since their peak in the early 1990s. There are a multitude of reasons for this decline. And that's really not what I want to talk about today, nor probably what you're interested in. What you need to know is, if you're considering creating or adding to your family through international adoption is the following one, international adoptions are still happening to most of the kids available are two or older, with more countries having older kids. Now, there are some exceptions to that. There are still younger children coming from a couple of countries, but for the most part, it is older kids. And most of these kids have some type of special need, meaning that they have a physical, developmental or mental health condition that you need to be prepared for. And when I say older, we're talking, you know, upwards of the ages of depending on the country, of course, four or five, six, something along those lines. And the last number three, which you need to know is that international adoption is still a great way to create your family. So a couple of other things we want to talk about when we're talking about international adoptions is that most countries have limitations on the type of parents that they're going to allow to adopt their kids, for example, they might have age limits, you have to be over a certain age and under a certain age, you may have to be a certain religion, you may have to have a certain body mass index, they would might exclude certain health conditions, and some might even require dual nationality with their country. And then honestly, there are a few that prohibit all adoptions to the united states such as the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Kenya, Russia, and Latvia. And other countries do not routinely process adoptions to the United States, though it may be possible. And then some countries do not even recognize the legal concept of adoption as a four as a mean a way that form a permanent parent child relationship. And then the question we get now is what's happening with China. And as of now, new adoptions for China are still on hold because the Chinese government is still maintaining its COVID related suspensions on all inter country adoptions. It is unclear whether international adoptions from China will ever resume. So to find out what countries are currently open, and what are the requirements for adopting from that country. There are two big resources one creating a family has adoption comparison chart, you can find them on our website, creating a family.org and then hover over the word adoption in the horizontal menu and click on adoption comparison charts. That's one source. And the other one is the US State Department's country information page, which can be [email protected]. But another option you have would be to contact an international adoption agencies. They're going to be the real experts and adopting from the countries that they serve that they have programs. And because they're in country all the time, and know the ins and the outs, you can find an agency just by Googling the name of the agency and the country you're interested in. Or better yet, start with an agency that are partners of creating a family. And these agencies use our educational materials to prep their families. And you can find them at creating a family.org hover over resources in the horizontal menu and click on partners. So we get asked this question a lot. What are the most popular the most where most of the kids are coming from if you live in the United States? So currently, the latest data we have is Colombia, India, South Korea, Bulgaria, and Haiti. Those are the most common placing countries most popular placing countries to the United States. Another big question, we guess is how much does it cost and that would be in Colombia, about 41,000 Plus travel. For India, it's about 36,000 Plus travel for South Korea at about 45,000 that also likely includes travel for Bulgaria. It's 38,000 Plus travel and for Haiti 48,000 Plus travel. So international adoption is not inexpensive. So it is thing also to consider. I hope this has been helpful for you. This is a question we get so often because sadly a lot is happening with international adoption right now. So hope you enjoyed it and make sure you come back next week. Before you go however, let me remind you that creating a family has free courses for you to take. These courses are provided through the support of the Toki being Family Foundation. We have 12 courses, they are on our website you can find them at Bitly slash J B F support and thanks for listening to this week's we can listen if you liked it. Please tell a friend to subscribe to the regular creating a family podcast because that's how you would get this in your feed.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai