FAS and other health issues in Ukraine?

HI,Ukraine is undergoing a difficult social and economic transition that has had a sad impact on children. The incidence of FAS is unknown, as this is not a diagnosis that is recognized in Ukraine or other post-Soviet countries. However, many of the young children who are in high demand among prospective adoptive parents due to their age (under the age of 3) became available for international adoption because their parents lost custody of their children due to alcohol or drug use, or a combination of that and crime. Other children are placed for adoption because of severe handicaps that parents in Ukraine are unable to handle. Women are currently not as likely to relinquish due solely to poverty, since there are now higher social welfare payments made in order to encourage them to keep their children. In the past, I would venture a guess that there were more children who were relatively healthy available due to the severe poverty so many suffered in the last 15 years. Today, however, the welfare system's changes have reduced the number of children relinquished voluntarily due solely to poverty. I think that a PAP needs to be ready for unknowns - including FAS or related diseases; and PAPs should also know that there are very few young, relatively healthy children who are currently available for adoption to the US, due to a new quota system that in part punishes the US for previous adoptive parents' noncompliance with Ukrainian rules requiring parents to submit periodic progress reports documenting that adopted children are doing well. Adoption of young handicapped children is not limited by this quota system - so PAPs who are willing to adopt children with a limb difference, a seizure disorder or other serious issues might find Ukraine to be the right country for them.Good luck! MM

We have adopted 3 children from UKraine in 2 separate adoptions-in 2001 and 2006. We adopted our son when he was 6 months old in 2001, he has some of the facial features of FAS/FAE and is now having a difficult time in school. Our other two children were 6 and 2 when we adopted them. We suspect that their mother drank with both pregnancies because she was drunk when they brought her into the delivery room with the youngest child. Neither of these children have facial features of FAS, but they both have language and cognitive delays that will negatively impact on them in school. The family with us in 2006 asked our facilitator about FAS and he blew up at them saying that there was no such thing as FAS in Ukraine. Believe me, alcohol is at least one of the four food groups in Ukraine, you can see people downing huge amounts of it at lunchtime and walking around with open bottles on the street at all times of the day. It's not just the impoverished people that drink a lot, you just have to hope that some of them know better than to drink when pregnant. It is getting harder and harder each year to adopt young and relatively healthy children from Ukraine, but a lot of the medical issues can be treated once the children come home and older children deserve a home too. Since you cannot preselect children in UKraine, you have to decide what age and medical conditions you are prepared to accept before you ever have your SDA appointment. You have to acknowledge your own limitations ahead of time as it is very hard to travel to Ukraine and be shown children that you have to turn down.

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