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Do we need an agency, or could we adopt just with the help of a Ukrainian facilitator? or licensed interpreter?
Let us say we will finish our home study, our INS application, put everything needed in our dossier and find a licensed translator here or in Ukraine.
Or we do need an agency to pay money?
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You don't need an agency, in fact, they can not represent you in Ukraine, as the state doesn't recognize them. Any agency you hire will subcontract to a Ukrainian facilitator anyway. That being said, you will still have to "pay money" - facilitators in Ukraine vary considerably in what they charge, some charge you up front for everything, then mention various "facilitation" payments you need to pay to get your documents through. The process varies highly from one case to the next.
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I would try to pay little or no money until after your first SDA meeting - where you are presented with children and accept one. Currently there is a very high rate of people not receiving a referral that matches their criteria and then never receiving a second meeting. IE then you are out all of your money.
oxford
Do we need an agency, or could we adopt just with the help of a Ukrainian facilitator? or licensed interpreter?
Let us say we will finish our home study, our INS application, put everything needed in our dossier and find a licensed translator here or in Ukraine.
Or we do need an agency to pay money?
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Opportunity to choose between adopting through an adoption agency or independently (by hiring adoption facilitator directly) is definitely an advantage of Ukraine adoption.
On the other hand it causes a problem of choice.
Adopting through agencies is more expensive than independent adoption.
And as Maxsmom wrote ғAny agency you hire will subcontract to a Ukrainian facilitator anyway Ԗ which is absolutely true.
My husband and me have adopted twice from Ukraine and we faced the same dilemma: agency adoption or independent adoption when we were at the beginning of our adoption journey.
We did not want to overpay but I also did not hunt for the cheapest option. The most important thing for us was a combination of reasonable fees and honest, reliable, professional services.
It took us 2 months to analyze all the available sources of adoption service and weigh up their fees, available references on them and so on.
Finally we found an independent adoption facilitator who actually also works with US adoption agencies. And we hired him independently. The most convincing facts about our adoption facilitator for us were:
1. He has been working in adoptions since 1999
2. He had facilitated over 150 adoptions by 2008
3. All the references we got on him and his competence were excellent and none of the families we contacted had a bad word on him. All of them underlined his competence, professionalism, honesty and reliability that were the most important things for us.
4. We found his fees the most reasonable
5. His contract is definitely the most clear and unequivocal compared to numerous other ones that we reviewed.
6. His contract does not provide for any upfront payments in Ukraine. When you get to Ukraine you pay only for a job that has been done.
7. Our facilitators services include assistance in composing adoption dossier correctly. (This is something that US agencies charge you a fortune for and actually that is all what they do for you). Our facilitatorҒs fee for this service was insignificant compared to fees of agencies. He helped us to compose our adoption dossier without a single mistake by providing us with detailed instructions on each document of our dossier and checking all our adoption documents. Considering that Ukrainian adoption authority (SDA) rejects dossiers that contain mistakes making families resubmit their dossiers that takes pretty much time, it is very important to compose adoption dossier in compliance with the requirements of Ukrainian law. It saves you much time and money.
8. His contract can be tailored for specific needs of any prospective adoptive family, giving them opportunity to exclude services they do not need or add any extra services.
Based on these facts we chose our facilitator and we used his services twice: in 2009 and 2011.
And I can hardly agree with those people on this forum who wrote that a role of adoption facilitators is narrowed down to a role of a translator.
When you decide to adopt from a foreign country, you never know what kind of difficulties you may encounter and what kind of help you may need.
So I recommend every prospective adoptive family to make sure that adoption facilitators they choose possess not only a good command of English, but also have competence in adoption law and substantial experience in adoptions.
If our facilitator was just a good translator, we would not have adopted our four kids.
As I wrote in one of my previous posts:
In our adoption experience we had a case when biological mother intervened in the adoption process when we were gathering documents for court in Ukraine. She lived nearby the orphanage and never visited her kids. But as soon as she learned that Americans came to adopt the children to whom she gave birth, she stepped in.
She hired a free of charge lawyer and applied to the local ChildrenӒs Service for retrieval of her parental rights.
That could have halted our adoption process for a pretty long time or even could have made it impossible at all, if we had not been blessed with our adoption facilitator.
He settled this issue with bio mother and her lawyer without any extra payments.
It took him two meetings with bio mother and her lawyer to explain to them their situation, their rights, opportunities and options in that situation and our position and our rights and opportunities.
Our second adoption from Ukraine required a trip to Russia as our older son was born in Tumen, Russia and one had to go to Russia to obtain a new birth certificate for him.
Russian federation has a little different procedural steps after court which made Russian authorities insist on getting Ukrainian court decree recognized by Russian government which required at least a month or two. And I have read posts of those American families whose adoption facilitators had to do what Russian vital registry officers said. That was horrible. Families had to spend extra several thousand dollars and wait for two months after Ukrainian court!!!
In our case we were blessed with our adoption facilitator who had gone to Russia several times before to get a new birth certificates. He knew about some international convention on legal cooperation and assistance which allowed him to enlighten ignorant Russian officers and persuade them that Ukrainian court decree is to be recognized automatically by them.
Thanks to his competence and good knowledge of international law, he got a new birth certificate for our son issued within three days in Russia.
Therefore I am sure that when choosing an adoption facilitator you should weigh his experience, knowledge and competence in adoption law allowing for contingent necessity for his help as a lawyer not just a translator.
If you need any help, please, PM me.
Cathy,
I'm glad that you had a good experience with your facilitator. You clearly did a great deal of research in making your selection. "Doing your homework" is absolutely vital when you are embarking upon one of the most important journeys you will make in your life -- the journey to adopt a child.
But there are some things I'd like to add.
1. Overseas facilitators may have a good understanding of the Ukrainian side of the adoption process, but may not have a good knowledge of U.S. immigration law. Be aware that, if you complete an adoption, and the U.S. Embassy decides that the paperwork is not right or that the child doesn't meet U.S. requirements for immigration, it could deny him/her an adoption visa. Then, you would have a child for whom you are legally and morally responsible, but no way to bring him/her home unless you live overseas for two years with him/her and then apply for a regular visa.
2. Unless you speak Ukrainian and understand medical terminology and the way it is used in Ukraine, you will have to rely on your overseas facilitator who may have no medical background whatsoever, and who may make errors in translating medical records or what the doctor says when you go to a child's orphanage. This is particularly important in Ukraine, where many of the available children have special needs. It is important for you to make a good decision about whether you can meet a child's needs, as well as to recognize that some diagnoses listed may be there to make the child adoptable, rather than to describe his/her actual condition. And while you may arrange to contact an adoption medicine physician in the U.S. before making a decision about a particular child, be aware that, despite Ukraine's stated policies, many families have been given only a brief overnight to decide whether to accept a child; that time frame may not allow you to send videos and medical reports to the U.S. doctor and have a consult about them over the phone.
3. If you make a bad choice of facilitator, and this leads to a situation in which you believe that he/she cheated you, gave you bad information, caused you to adopt a child with a medical condition you can't handle, or caused you to go home without a child, you will have no recourse, if you have chosen an unlicensed foreign person to assist you. If you use a licensed U.S. agency, most will have a refund policy, a grievance policy, and, as a last resort, professional liability insurance that will pay in the event that you sue. And even if you use an unlicensed U.S. facilitator, you will be able to take him/her to court and try to recover your costs or, at least, put him/her out of business. You will not be able to do these things if you use a foreign facilitator.
I'm not saying that independent adoption is always bad. However, it tends to work best if a person has a thorough knowledge of the foreign country and its adoption system, a good working knowledge of the foreign language, a good knowledge of the medical issues found in many international adoptions, and so on. Independent adoption is inherently riskier than international adoption through a licensed agency, and requires a parent to be more accepting of unknowns about the process and the child.
Sharon
We indeed invested lots of time and efforts to find a professional and reliable facilitator with reasonable fees.
But I want to be clearly and unambiguously understood: I am not against agency adoptions. I am sure there are many good ones who subcontract professional and competent facilitators in Ukraine. I have actually found many great references on one agency and can recommend it if anybody needs.
The reasons why we did not use an agency are simple it was a little expensive for us to adopt through agencies + we found and contracted directly a competent, experienced and reliable facilitator for reasonable fee.
The only reason why I am sharing my experience on adoption from Ukraine and post my advices here is that I am willing to help those destitute Ukrainian kids find their forever families by advising prospective adoptive families of actual adoption situation in Ukraine.
As I wrote in one of my previous messages, now I am helping my relative adopt from Ukraine and I am constantly staying in touch with our adoption facilitator to be well informed of current adoption situation in Ukraine.
That is why I feel responsible to share what I know with others too.
I have also noticed that some incorrect notion of adoption situation in Ukraine is given here.
I understand that each of us has very subjective judgment, opinion and experience and I do not insist on my experience and opinion being the most objective.
I am just trying to share what I know with those who contemplate adopting or helping Ukrainian orphans as I feel that my experience and advise can be valuable considering that I have adopted twice from Ukraine.
As to your additions:
1. I absolutely agree with you that there is some risk of visa denial, if your facilitator is ignorant of the basic immigration requirements of the US Consulate. I do not think that there is rather serious probability of adoption failure over facilitator֒s ignorance of US immigration law. I am sure that most of them do not know this law perfectly. But in order to exclude cases of visa denial, the US Embassy issued a pretty short list of all the relevant requirements for adoptive families and adoption facilitators in Ukraine. At least our facilitator knows these requirements by heart and showed us the list of these requirements when giving us all the necessary documents for visas so that we could check everything according to this list.
So this is another reason for careful selection of a candidature for adoption facilitator.
2. I assume that not every good adoption facilitator has a good command of English and good knowledge of medical terminology.
Our facilitator had no difficulties with English at all. Indeed he even provided us with Medical glossary so that we could understand meaning of different diagnosis in English.))))
Our facilitator cooperates with licensed professional pediatrician in Ukraine and he offered us to take him along to regions of our adoption to make sure that diagnoses of kids corresponded to their actual state of health.
We did that + we exposed our kids to several additional tests in an independent private clinic of Ukraine. And no one hurried us nor limited our time during our making decision on adoption.
I know for sure that Ukrainian legislation does not limit prospective adoptive families in time they need to come to a decision.
Moreover, the inspector in Ukraine gave us a long lecture explaining to us all our rights and obligations relating to adoption in Ukraine during our first meeting with her and insisted that we spend as much time with the kids as we need to arrive at a decision.
When we came to her office with a firm decision to adopt the kids, she was kind of inclined to ask us to spend more time with kids and we had to assure her that our positive decision was quite deliberate and that we had gotten a comprehensive info on the kids and decided to adopt them.
Observance of all the rights of prospective adoptive families solely depends on their adoption facilitator as facilitators are the only ones who can protect these rights.
When you get into a foreign environment and deal with foreign bureaucrats who rarely are nice, it causes certain psychological discomfort. Under such circumstances it is very difficult to be adequately assertive when necessary especially if you are not versed in legislation of a foreign country.
And the only person who can guarantee and guard your rights is an adoption facilitator. That is why it is of vital importance to contract a competent and experienced one.
In our case our facilitator exhaustively prepared us for each new step which usually happened at diner. He explained to us each step ahead of us letting us know what we can do and what we should not do.
So we had an absolute confidence in our facilitator knowing that our rights were well guarded.
3. Agree with you on all the cited problems associated with hiring a bad facilitator.
As to refund policy, we did not have to worry about that as the contract of our adoption facilitator is designed in the way that you pay only for a job that has been done. His contract does not provide for any advance payment except for dossier translation and help in dossier preparation. So he offers step by step payment schedule.
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