International Adoption from the Philippines

For all adoptive parents. The Philippines Inter Country Adoption Board (ICAB) is very short of todlers boys and girls from 0 to 2 yr. It is most likely to take over a year for such matching to be found. If you want a shorter wait time, try to lax your application from 0 to maybe 5 or 6 yrs for both sexes. Also the Philippines for the past three months has severly striction their rules and regulations on International Adoption. Every child need to be matched from ICAB according to their criteria and the information provided from adoptive parents. POTENTIAL ADOPTIVE PARENTS ARE NO LONER ALLOW TO GO STRAIGHT TO THE ORPANAGE AND CHOOSE A CHILD THEY LIKE. ICAB is very discourage this kind of action and 95% of the chance that they will reject the child you are proposing to adotive this way. The process is that when a abandoned child is found , the local and regional DSWD has to take action and the child need to be published locally in order for any relatives or the birth parents of the child come along to claim the child. Such posting takes about one month. If during such time nobody come forward to claim the child, the child will be taken to the Orpahange or homes for street children and ready for adoption. The adoption is taken place locally first. If there is not much success in local adoption, the child will be brought to be adopted Internationally. The Philippines Intercountry Adoption Board is the government appointed body who handle Inter Country Adoption as well as relative adoption for the child to be adopted abroad. The child cannot leave the country unlessICAB issued a letter of No Objection stating that all the required rules have been complied with. ICAB is very strict with all adoptions. In many cases adoptive parents will experience disappointments or frustration about the many legal red tapes and layers upon layers of beauraucracy there. It is not because ICAB wants to be "mean" to anyone and treat the kids like a pice of "legal paper". In some case they can be mean if you are not following their rules, regulations and guidlines and the child ends up in the street trying to find a home himself. It is because they try hard to establish a set of rule that everyone can follow so that nobody can "cut corners". Sadly many kids end up in street corners as a result of such rules. It is often found that compassion for the kids from adoptove parents is given a severe blow with all the strict rules and regulation which dictates what are the best interests for the child from the one and only one authority who is make the decision. The love and bonding of the child with the adoptive parents is taken away and replaced with the thousand pages thick piece of highly complex legal documentation which spells out the do and don't with absolute no mentioning of love for the fact that "the law if the law". The sadest part of that piece of paper is that everyone tends to interpret it differently. They can win only depends on how much power he or she can have. In many cases the child has to go because of such and such legal technicalities which overtake the bonding between the adoptive parents and the child. In many instances the child's best interests (for love and care) is taken away just by a piece of paper. Adoption requires lots of patients and also depends on how well one can cope with or sometime to fight the system.