Change age range

No, we haven't. We simply requested AYAP, As Young As Possible.

You should just be able to do an addendum to your homestudy. You 171 doesn't specify age.

We wanted to have a different age range and during the home study, the SW didn't agree with us. From the start we wanted a boy from 1 to 3yrs and in the end the SW only approuved 0 to 1 yr... we had to negotiate hard to add and extra 6 months to our age range. So now we are 0 to 18mo. You will have to check first with your SW because it's her reccomendation that gives the official age range. If your SW agrees then you shouldn't have any problems but if you don't then you may possibly not be able to change the range.

We did a domestic homestudy, so I'm not sure if it's the same. But we just called our homestudy agency and said we wanted an addendum to change the age and special needs we were willing to consider. We were considering adopting an older child at the time. We were able to change our homestudy from only accepting ages 0-2 and basically healthy, to accepting ages 0-14 with some special needs with basically just a phone call and a few emails. They added a one-page document to the back of our homestudy which we then had to send to everyone who had our original homestudy.

Just be carefull on the age ranges. A friend who was adopting in Vietnam, her referral fell through while she was in Vietnam. Her homestudy said 0 - 18 months. While she was in Vietnam she was offered a little boy 20 months, she had to return home to have her paperwork updated. She then returned and adopted the little boy. She ended up in total 10 weeks in Vietnam, her agency paid the additional air fares.

So do I understand that correctly that the age range is not logged in at the time of referral? So if I get a referral of the upper limit of the age range, and by time of travel the age limit will of course been exceeded, can that cause issues?

When you receive a referral you are ok. Your referral is based on the paperwork that is in existance at that particular time and it is also six months in date. The problem occurs if your referral falls through, if it falls through while you are in Vietnam, the Vietnamese always put in a great effort to get another suitable referral while you are there.

Thanks as always for your great insights. I have another question though. Who is actually in charge of all the adoption agencies in case of fraud, unethical behaviour or general complaints?

No one is in charge, no one audits humanitarian aid, agencies make wild claims about the amount of aid they give to orphanages. When you check out their accounts on Guidestar all you find are large compensation payments to agency owners and employees. If you have a serious complaint and want to hit the agency hard, write to the US ambassador in Vietnam, he takes a keen interest in what is going on. He is an adopted person himself. If that agency has people going through the system at that time, questions will be asked about the particular agency at the interview stage. I would also advise you to contact Linh Son at ethicanet.org and let her know what is going on, also contact the BBB in your state and also write to Maura Harty Secretary of State for Children. ou could also try JCICS, only problem it is funded by the agencies, I have not heard of anyone getting too much satisfaction from them. [url]http://www.jcics.org/Complaint_Policy.pdf[/url] List your complaint on all the adoption forums and name and shame the agency. AAR are particularly good at exposing malpractice in agencies and they have an extensive archive.