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Hello, We are gathering information on adopting in the Ukraine. We have decided that we wish to adopt a child, aged 3-5, if possible. We have a 5 year old son (natural birth child) already. We have been gathering information on various agencies, reading much and now asking for guidance on this forum. I am wondering if anyone could give us their experiences in both adopting a child in this age category in Ukraine and how the country fees were handled. Also, if you can advise as to any particular agencies who are better known for referrals in this age category. We have set our account so that emails can be sent to us by anyone here wishing to do so. If the agency advise must go by email, we certainly don't want to violate any rules of the forum. Thanks, the Holbrook family.
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We just returned two weeks ago with our son age 4.5 and have a son who will turn 6 in September who we had adopted from Slovakia at age 3.In our sons 'groupa' there were 12 children age 3, the majority of them were available for adoption since birth - two of them a boy and a girl had never had a single person visit them. I wonder if it isn't because of being cross-eyed?Anyway, you can read about our experiences at:Newbrother.blog-city.com
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Holbrook family,
You have a choice of agency or indy and with wanting a child age 3-5yo, I would definitely choose indy.
You don't receive pre-travel referrals for Ukraine at all, so one agency won't have better referrals than another since they won't have any. Once you arrive in Ukraine, you will visit the NAC where you will look at children's profiles and select a child to visit.
Country fees should be the same regardless of the age of the child for Ukraine. If they are not, I wouldn't use that agency or indy helper. Make sure when you are comparing that you know what is included and what is not, it can make a difference of thousands of dollars total.
For many countries, 3-5yo is considered adopting an "older" or special needs child. This is not the case in Ukraine. The average age of child adopted is around 4yo, varies a little from time to time, but this has been the average for the last few years.
I have 4 Ukrainian children adopted from 5.6yo to 7.4yo. They are now 10.8yo to 9yo. They have been home 4 years to 20 months and have all transitioned well.
Hi,
You should be prepared to go with older kids if you want relatively healthy kids. According to the state agency in Ukraine that handles adoptions, most eligible kids are older than your age group and many kids in the age group you wish to adopt are disabled ( [url]http://www.nac.gov.ua/en/novyny.htm[/url]): "... in 2004 the Centre received 7093 application forms of adoptable orphaned children, in comparison with 4502 in 1999. At the present there are 24.000 application forms of adoptable children in the data base of the Centre. The application forms of senior children compose the overwhelming majority. Almost 1/3 of the children under age of four years who can be adopted have serious diseases such as Downs syndrome, infantile cerebral paralysis, serious development defects, chronic hepatitis, AIDS etc. Every month, 600-800 application forms are registered in the data base. 90% whereof are made for children older than 10 years old, 5% Җ for children whose parents had died or perished, the others are made for social orphans.
Social orphan is a special social demographic group of children. These children have parents, but following to social, economic and moral reasons they have appeared to be orphans. This fact leads to the increase of children deprived of their family environment."