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Thailand Adoption Alert

A group of Thai children.
Source: flickr.com.


Notice: Status of Intercountry adoptions in Thailand (April 1, 2010)


The Department of Social Development and Welfare (DSDW) has announced that it will not accept new inter-country adoption requests made directly through DSDW for "healthy" orphans from Thailand for 2010. According to DSDW, there are not many orphans available for intercountry adoption in this category in need of placement. Therefore, new inter-country adoption requests made directly to DSDW are closed in Thailand for 2010. Intercountry adoption cases that are currently pending and ongoing may still proceed with the finalization of the adoption, but those cases may experience some delays in matching. DSDW intends to clear all pending cases before proceeding with any new intercountry adoptions.


DSDW does not believe that the U.S. applicants will be affected because most of the adoption requests by U.S. citizens are submitted through Holt Sahathai or Thai Red Cross Foundations, which are not affected by the change.


Furthermore, the announcement does not affect the following cases:


  1. 2010 new requests directly made through DSDW for (a) special needs children (those with health problems) and (b) older orphans (ages 5 years and older) - These two orphan categories are still available for intercountry adoption requests that can be made directly to DSDW in 2010. These categories of orphans receive the fewest number of requests and DSDW has informed the U.S. Embassy in Bangkok that it can continue to process these cases.
  2. Orphans under licensed agencies' quotas, regardless of special needs (health problems, grown-up orphans ages 5 years and older) - These agencies have a separate quota of orphans available for intercountry adoption. Therefore, adoption requests made through these licensed agencies will likely not be affected by this policy. However, this is dependent on each licensed agency's total number of orphans available for adoption.


Source: travel.state.gov/content/adoptionsabroad/en/country-information/alerts-and-notices/thailand-1.html


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