Notice on SDAPRC Unused Quotas

On October 14, 2008 the Ministry for Family, Youth and Sports published official Order #3899 approving revised procedures for submission of new adoption dossiers from foreign citizens in the fourth quarter of 2008. The annual adoption dossiers quota for 2008 previously had been set at 1,453. Although all of these were booked within the first months of this year, not all of these families actually submitted dossiers. As a result, the SDAPRC (State Department for Adoptions and Protection of the Rights of the Child) has now opened the unused slots for new adoption dossiers. These slots are not an increase in the annual quota; rather they still fall under the annual limit of 1,453 dossiers. This number is not subdivided by country or by specific categories of children.

The SDAPRC resumed acceptance of new dossiers on October 14th, 2008 and will continue accepting dossiers for 2008 until November 27th, 2008.

Order #3899 includes two attachments, one of them presenting the number of children available for intercountry adoptions, sorted by age and health condition, as of September 1, 2008. Please note that these statistics are independent of annual quota set by the Ministry (noted above), but provide a useful overview of ages and health condition of children available for adoption. The second attachment is the schedule for submission of adoption dossiers from foreign adoptive parents. Both documents are below.

Attachment 1

Analysis of the numbers of children available for intercountry adoptions according to their age and health condition
(based on the information from the central databank as of September 1, 2008)

Age of children	Number of children (% from the total number)	Health condition Healthy or with correctable medical problems Serious health problems
Under 3 years old	551 (2,6 %)	--- 551
3 – 5 years old	1324 (6,1 %)	109 1215
6 – 11 years old	5408 (24,9 %)	3011 2397
12 – 17 years old	14418 (66,4 %)	11337 3081
Total	21701 (100,0 %)	14457 7244

Ludmyla Volynets, Director of the SDAPRC

Attachment 2

Schedule for submission of the dossiers from foreign adoptive parents in the IV-th quarter of 2008

Day of the week	Recommendation for the child’s age from the competent authority of the country of residence of adoptive parents*
Monday	Dossiers for children under 6 years old and those that have no specific limits for the child’s age
Tuesday	Dossiers for children 6-11 years old
Wednesday	Dossiers for children 12 years and older
Thursday	Dossiers for children 12 years and older

Ludmyla Volynets, Director of the SDAPRC

*For U.S. citizens this is the recommendation of the social worker in the homestudy

** source link http://kyiv.usembassy.gov/amcit_adoptions_notice_0119_eng.html

Myths and realities of adoption from Ukraine

Information from interview with Lyudmila Volynets, director of SDA.

There are a lot of myths around the inter-country adoptions. One is the prevailing opinion that foreigners adopt sick children. In fact, every third candidate for the adoptive parents, who has received an invitation from SDA for meeting with the child refuses to adopt because of the health of the child. Almost every child has a «bouquet» of all sorts of (often incurable) disease - an average of 3 to 11 diseases «per capita». Overall, the total numbers of children adopted by foreigners less than 1% have severe health problems (Down syndrome, Cerebral Palsy, genetic diseases).

The belief that foreigners are willing to adopt adult children is also untrue. In fact, 80% of foreign applicants wish to adopt a child under 5 years old. With regard to adult children, they tend to be adopted by families in which the children rested on rehabilitation programs abroad.

Not more than a myth is statement that foreigners are willing to adopt all brothers and sisters from one family. «In every second (!) case the question arises as to separation of brothers and sisters because of their health status and age», - notes Volynets. According to her, the problem is compounded by the fact that brothers and sisters are the vast majority of children available for adoption - 85%.

According to statistics, today the family of Ukrainian citizens raised more than 35 thousand of adopted children, yet more than 30 thousand children have legal grounds to be adopted. At the same time, polls show that almost every fifth Ukrainian family (19%) is ready to adopt a child. Here arises the paradox: despite the fact that thousands of Ukrainians could potentially adopt children and 30 thousand children are ready for adoption, in fact, annually adopted by some 5 thousand children, of whom less than 2 thousand - by citizens of Ukraine.

«The problem is that when it comes to adoption, all imagine a baby, who was given birth yesterday, today adopted. However, it is not so.” According to her, in general, Ukrainian citizens (as well as foreigners) focused on the adoption of healthy babies and healthy children under 5 years old.

But only 5% of the 30 thousand children are children under 5 years old. Only 5% of them are relatively healthy. Thus, «young and healthy», which want to adopt all, regardless of country of residence, from 30 thousand come up to around 75 people. The conclusion made by the experts, terrible and almost despairing: Ukraine simply do not have children who are potentially willing to adopt.