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I know the health of the children in Ukraine is an issue but i wondered what the realistic expectation should be? Are you talking physical, emotional, or develpmental issues or all? Can anyone give me specifics? Thanks Gina
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Gina,
The children range from relatively healthy, even some very healthy, to severely impacted. I have 4 adopted Ukrainian children. One has FAS, one has ADHD & PTSD, and 2 are healthy.
Just as with the US foster system, you will encounter children will all types of issues. As a general rule of thumb, you can expect developmental delays of 1 month for every 3 months spent in an orphanage. So, if you were to adopt a 2yo who had been institutionalized since birth you would expect him/her to be developmentally more like a 16mo.
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Right now there is a very poor selection of younger children we just returned and adopted a 7 year old boy ( We went for a child under 4) There are few new referals and so most people have to look through the books. Not to scare you but these books are very picked over the NAC sees 12 families a day (or more many people have to return for a 2nd & 3rd appointment) so thins are backed up. While we were there many families went home with out a child the director gave them permission to come back later in the year the problem with this is that back logs the process even more. Our child was healthy but older than we had wanted you must be open minded on age because if you want a healthy toddler it is rare and snached up in seconds. Bottom line with the 12 families a day the NAC sees maybe 2-3 will get what they are looking for on the first appintment ( each appintment take a week to get) plan on beeing there at least 4 weeks this year things are slow.