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.