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We are looking at all of our options for adoption - for someone who has recently adopted from Colombia or is in process can you please tell me what the timelines look like from submission of paperwork to referral to home? We are looking at child aged 4-7 or a sibling group of two 4-9?
thanks
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The most reliable way to see how long it would take would be to look at the most recent wait list published by ICBF. It came out about a week ago. This list does not reflect sepcial needs children. The definition of special needs are children with disabilities, children over 8 years of age, and sibling groups of 3 or more. By referring to this list you can see that the wait for single 6 or 7 year old is much shorter than any other age group. You can also see that the wait for 3 or 4 year olds is actually longer than for an infant under 2 years of age. Hermanos in this case refers to sibling groups of 2. If you really want a quick referral you must request that one sibling be 7 years old. Otherwise the wait will be at least a year. [URL="http://www.adecop.org/web/archivos/n217f1.pdf"]http://www.adecop.org/web/archivos/n217f1.pdf[/URL]
After you submit your paperwork to the ICBF in Colombia, it has been taking them around 3 months to approve your paperwork. ( give or take a month ). If you request a sibling group of 3 or more you could see a referral within 1 to 3 months. We were matched with a sibling group prior to even receiving our approval letter. They waited of course for us to receive that first but then the referral came for 3 siblings ages 2, 4, and 6 shortly after. So it does all depend how many children and their ages so it is hard to give a definate answer.
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Donna, What did you request in your application? A sibling group of 3 under 6 or 3 under 7? Just wondering. How old was your oldest at referral time -- 6 years and how many months? Just curious. I am trying to better understand the referral of 3 siblings. I know when you request 3 siblings your dossier is handled in the same way as Colombian natives --HIghest Priority. BUt, I am wondering about how rigid the referral guidelines have been in the past?
Our request on our application to the ICBF stated 2 or 3 siblings with the age range of 3 to 6. We didn't think they would allow younger than 3 due to our age so that is why we put 3 to 6. Our approval letter however was for 3 siblings ages 0-7. My only thinking with this is that they had siblings in mind for us and the wait list for 0-6 was longer so they put us on the 0-7 and that put us at the top of the list. It is strange when I look at the referral letter and it states that we were considered for these children at the April meeting and our approval letter was dated in May. Now at the time of that meeting in April the children were 1.10 months, just turned 4 and 5.10 months. We then arrived in July which made them 2.1, 4.3 and 6.1 years old. We are also unable to have children and I was told that gave us some priority. And lastly we were also told that we were considered for these children because I look like the birthmother. Regarding your question Kim about the transition with our school age children, we really didn't have much trouble at all. We came home at the end of August and I didn't start school with them until the beginning of October. Our oldest had ESL everyday and by Christmas was speaking only English. I will send you our blog so you can go back last fall and see how we did. We truly had no problems at all. Donna
We sent in our dossier May 2007 asking for 3 children, either gender ages 0-7. We received our referral in July 2007 for 3 boys - ages 2 yrs 4 months, 5 yrs 8 months and 8 yrs 0 months. We are older (45 and 47 at referral) and had 2 older (20 & 23) biological children. We were told to expect a referral very shortly after our dossier was sent to Colombia and within 2 months we had it. The actual referral letter was dated about 6 weeks after we sent the dossier to our agency.
Karen
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