Our adoption was cancelled in 2014

 I've left this blog up and active for the past ten years. Our adoption was never complete, and I felt that it was necessary to let people know that not all adoption journeys are successful. We had some serious concerns regarding the trafficking of children for international adoptions and then also concerns with how some of the local adoptions worked. 

It is of our opinion now that, should anyone be interested in adopting, they may want to foster first. Additionally, for international adoptions, it's better to directly visit an orphanage in a foreign country first, meet the children, and see if you have a match than to try to complete the process at home. 

We have since moved overseas. I am working at a university, and my husband is an international operations manager. We have since decided to remain childless.

We've Completed the Course Work for Our Local Adoption

Bob and I had met with Children's Services at the beginning of January to start the process for our local adoption.  We had submitted the request for our Criminal Record Check and Child Intervention Check, along with all of our supporting documents to start (i.e. Marriage Certificates, Birth Certificates, etc.) to start this process.

We had then also registered for and attended the required courses, which ran from the beginning of February through the middle of March.

However, we did have a wrench thrown in to our plans mid-January.  I had been corresponding with my ex-husband's son, who is now 18 years.  My ex-husband and his new wife had moved to another province and his son was homeless in Edmonton.  We had brought him down to Calgary on a bus and he's been living with us ever since.  He's finishing his high school diploma and has been working out at they gym.  Changing his diet and exercise regime has allowed for him to gain 30 lbs over the past few months.  He has some issues he has to deal with, but he's much healthier and in a much better place.  We're also working on helping him rebuild his relationship with his biological father.

Because we are now the parent to a teen (one who I have had a bond with for years), our adoption is on hold.  We would need to wait until January to move forward, as 12 months would be required before adding additional children in to a family with Children's Services.

We're Still Adopting

After closing our case for International Adoption with Alberta Children's Services and with the DRC Program with our Agency, we have decided to continue on the adoption path, but we've completely changed course.

We've submitted our application to adopt with the
Wednesday's Child Program.

We have decided to adopt a child or sibling pair that is currently in our local Foster Care System.

I had attended the information session the first Wednesday of October, when Bob was in Albania and then dropped off our application the following Friday.  When I attended the session in October, it seemed as though we were a unique case.

I attended the November session, this time with Bob, and we found out that we're one of 35 families who have recently changed from an African adoption program to the Wednesday's Child Program.

It looks like it will take another 3 - 4 months for our first interview and to be assigned to a case worker. Since we already have our paperwork from our dossier, the steps to complete our revised home study will go quickly.  However, we are, sort of, starting the process all over again.

What happened to our International Adoption?

I haven't updated in a while, as we had to really think about the path we wanted to take and which direction we want to go.

Back in April, we received a letter from our agency in the US asking us to sign and acknowledge that there are difficulties with the DRC Adoption Program for Canadian Families. And, the program may be terminated or delayed at any point and that there would be no reimbursements for families in the process, should this occur.  We were hesitant in signing the document, because they kept confusing the Province of Saskatchewan with Customs and Immigration Canada.  We sort of felt that an agency handling foreign adoptions should know the policies of the countries that their families are from.  Furthermore, it was disheartening that they didn't seem to know the difference between the Provincial Government of Saskatchewan and the Canadian Government.

As we're from Alberta, we decided to just ignore this letter and we stayed in the program.  By ignore, I mean, we didn't sign it and send it back.  I had actually called the Director of Alberta Children's Services and had a lengthy discussion about this with her.  She had suggested to make sure that we had all the facts before accepting any matches (i.e. asking for complete and translated medical records, have the abandonment certificate and know who dropped the child off and why, ask for a copy of any birth records, etc.).

So, we continued to wait to see what would happen, as we had already invested so much time in this program.

The third week of September, I had sent an email to the Director of the DRC program with our agency asking whether there were any updates.  She asked me a couple of questions, which I thought she should know, had she ever looked at our file.  Then, that afternoon, she emailed over a photos of a potential match, the most adorable sibling pair.

However, we had many questions about this match and the missing information.
1) Why were there medical records for the girl and not the boy?
2) Why were the documents not translated?
3) The children appeared to be much older than what they were claiming.
4) They believed the children may be siblings, but they had no idea.  I asked for a DNA test or some sort of verification and this is not possible until after we accept and pay for the match ($14000 USD) and then pay for the DNA testing after.
5) There was no record of who dropped the children off at the orphanage.

After reviewing the papers, sending the medical information to a High School Colleague who is a medical doctor and fluent in French, and engaging in a 2 hour conference call with the Director of Alberta Children's Services, we had decided that, should we get some of the missing information (which the agency said they were looking for), we will accept the match gladly.

Then, the agency stopped corresponding with us for a couple of days until, we finally received a BCC email that went out to every family in the program informing us that the program has been shut down for at least 12 months.  This email was sent out at 10 pm on the last Friday of September.  It indicated the decisions to suspend the program went through on the Wednesday and they waited to the weekend to inform the families, whilst their office was closed.

So, we had not accepted the match, did not pay for the match, and the odds were that this would likely never go through, especially since Alberta Children's Services have stopped accepting new applications to adopt from DRC in Spring.  This was absolutely devastating and we were highly disappointed in how this was handled by our agency.  I have to admit, I didn't leave the house the entire weekend.

So...what do we do now?

Bob was leaving for Albania on Tuesday and I was going to be alone for a couple of weeks.  Monday Morning, Bob got on the phone with Alberta Children's Services and discussed our situation and we made the choice to close our International Adoption File.

I had then contacted our agency and asked for them to send our dossier back to us via Fed Ex and close our case.  They didn't ask any questions and we received our file back 3 days later with all of our paper work.

And, Still Waiting

We've recently received a few notifications from our agency.  As Canadians require more paperwork in order for travel to be approved by CIC, they are now going to charge Canadian families more for their matches.  This is bittersweet.  On one hand, we know there is greater chance that Part II of immigration will be approved by CIC, on the other hand, shouldn't that already be included?

The other notification we've received is that the DRC officials are now approving exit letters again.

The delay in our match is partly based on the delay in exit letters and partly due to the changes in the program for Canadians.

We're continuously told that we're at the front of the line and we should be matched shortly.  It just depends on the next set of children to come in to the orphanage.  When I spoke with the ladies at Alberta Children's Services, they told me that everyone is told they're next in line, regardless of agency or countries for adoption and they wish the agencies would stop telling parents this.  We believe we should be receiving our match within the next couple of months, but we're not entirely sure...

I guess we're just going to have to continue to wait and see...

(We) Will Wait (For You)

Now I'll be bold
As well as strong
And use my head alongside my heart
So tame my flesh
And fix my eyes
A tethered mind freed from the lies

And I'll kneel down,
Wait for now
I'll kneel down,
Know my ground

Raise my hands
Paint my spirit gold
And bow my head
Feel my heart slow

'Cause I will wait, I will wait for you
And I will wait, I will wait for you
And I will wait, I will wait for you
And I will wait, I will wait for you

Still Waiting

We're waiting for our match and I'm guessing we may have a couple more months to go.  While we've been waiting, we've made some very positive changes.  We understand that food means love to children adopted internationally.  We also know that we will need to keep an abundance of food in our home and readily available (i.e. a bowl of fruit and nuts on the counter in reach).  So, we've done a lot of research on food and nutrition.

Here are the changes we made:
1) Over the holidays, we bought a juicer and we've been using it every day to juice whole foods (fruits and vegetables).  We're currently doing a juicing cleanse and we plan to keep juicing on a daily basis.
2) We've adopted "Meatless Mondays", which is our dedicated day to be vegetarian.
3) We're adding Chia to salads and steel cut oats
4) We've cut out Aspertame
5) We avoid High Fructose Corn Syrup and MSG whenever possible.
6) We try to buy local organic produce - although sometimes this can be difficult
7) We switched from colas and lattes to tea

We've started making these changes over the past couple of months.  I had stopped eating beef two years ago and we started buying mainly organic produce then, but we've spent more time recently analyzing our diets.  We haven't really lost any weight, but we're feeling much more alert, we're functioning better at work, and we feel happier.

Since our child will equate food with love, it's important to us that we have the right kinds of food and that we can teach what it means to have a good diet.

Do They Know It's Christmas Time?

We Finally Received Part 1 of Our Citizenship Application

When I arrived home yesterday evening and checked the mailbox, I was delighted to find that we have finally received confirmation from Citizenship and Immigration Canada regarding Part 1 of our Application for Canadian Citizenship for a Person Adopted by a Canadian Citizen.  They have approved Part 1 and we are able to apply for Part 2, once we are matched to our child.

This piece of paper was the final form required for our dossier.  We were moved forward to the match process without it, since they knew it would come in before it was needed, but I'm happy to have everything complete and I will be sending in this form via courier on Monday.

Estimated Wait for a Match

I just received an email from our adoption agency.  I was asking a question about the Post-Placement Deposit and the estimated time to receive our match.

The Post-Placement Deposit is a fee they take and then they return the deposit once they receive the reports.  This is to ensure that we're doing the Post-Placement.

They currently have a single boy in the orphanage that's 4-years.  If they match him with us, then we would be matched shortly.  It depends on who is ahead of us in the queue that have requested a child that age.  Otherwise, for a child between 2- and 4- years, we will likely be waiting for about 6 months for our match.  For a child between 0- and 2- years, we would be waiting closer to 12 months.

Our Dossier Is Complete and We're Waiting For Our Referral

Bob and I had been working on our Dossier throughout the Summer and we had submitted all of the paperwork.  We paid the final agency fee last week.

We have one piece of paper missing from our Dossier, which is Part 1 of Immigration from Canada Customs and Immigration.  We had applied on this in August and were told there was an 8 week turn around time.  I finally got through to Canada Customs and Immigration at the end of November to inquire on where our application was at and I was told that the wait time had increased to 16 weeks and that we should have it back by November 30 at the latest.

We've informed our agency of the status of our Part 1 application and they've moved us forward to the referral section without it, knowing that we will have it before they send us a referral.

After paying the final portion of our dossier fees, we then had to complete 3 online courses and receive the certificates to move forward in the referral process.  I managed to complete all the courses and receive the certificates on Tuesday.  Most of the information in the courses is redundant information, since we also attend the classes offered at our local agency.  The course information includes: Dealing with Grief, Loss, and Separation; Transracial Adoption; and Attachment.

A few weeks ago, we were presented with a potential match (even though we hadn't paid the final portion of the dossier fees).  This potential match was for a sibling group with 3 children (boy 4- years, girl 6-years, girl 8-years).  We were considering this groups and had several serious discussions with family and friends.  We attended a course on transracial adoptions at our Canadian Agency in Calgary and spoke with the Director of our agency after the course.  In our meeting (and in the meeting with our social worker), we were advised that both the provincial government and the federal government would have an issue with us attempting to adopt this sibling group and we would likely not be approved.  In the Province of Alberta, the majority of adoptions of "older" children (children between 6 and 10) have been unsuccessful, where the parents had a 50% divorce rate and people have requested to "return" the children, so the provincial government typically only approves adoptions of older children if these children are related in some way to the parents, or if the parents have other children or experience being foster parents.  The federal government would have a different issue with this match, and it is based on adopting 3 children at once.
We trust our Social Worker and the Director of our Agency and have taken their advice to wait for the referral we had originally applied for.  We hope these children find a loving home.


We're now waiting for our match.  We have requested a boy between 0 & 4-years, but will accept a girl and will accept a sibling pair.  It may take anywhere between 2 and 12 months to receive our match.  Once we're matched and we accept the referral, we have our child and then have to wait for about 9 months to bring our child home.  I understand that the waiting, once you know who your child (or children) is, is the hardest part, because this is the point when you become emotionally attached to your child and you develop a great longing to have your child at home with you.

We're getting close, but know we have to be patient.

We Passed!

I've just arrived home and brought in the mail and we passed!  Our approval of our home study was in the mail with all of the documentation to move forward.

We have been waiting for the approval for two months and it finally came in.  We haven't paid for our dossier to our US agency yet, as we wanted to make sure we had this approval.  We will be submitting this payment today and moving forth with the dossier paperwork.

We've also decided to apply for a short mortgage as an adoption loan.

Still Waiting to be Approved by Children's Services

Bob and I are still waiting to hear from Alberta Children's Services for our approval of our home study.  It was submitted to the Alberta Government at the beginning of May.  We were told it would take at least 6 weeks to hear back.  It's been more than 7 weeks now, so I'm sure we'll have something in the mail now any day.  It's tough waiting.

Sigh...

Our Home Study is Being Submitted

Bob is home from Albania and we've just signed off on our Home Study.  We'll return the paperwork tomorrow and I'm going to double check there are no errors in it before it's submitted. So, we're getting one step closer.

I've started supporting another charity today.  I thought I would post this here as well.  Although we have put our preference for a boy and will accept a match with a girl, I think this very important.  Please see "Because I am a Girl".

Our Home Study is Complete - We just have to sign off

We've received a message that our home study is complete and we need to read through it and sign for it before it can be sent to the provincial government for approval.  We were going to try to make it over to our agency and do this in the office last week, but we ran out of time.  Bob's heading to Albania to work until the third of May, so they're going to send the papers to us in the mail and we'll have to get him to sign them when he gets back.  Once we send this in, we'll have to wait for 1 - 2 months for approval.  So, it looks like we won't know whether we've passes until June or July.

Our Home Study Report is in the Writing Stages

Our Social Worker has finished our series of interviews with us and has written our Home Study Report, which is now in the editing stages.  We'll be asked to review the final draft and sign off on it before it gets sent in to Children's Services.  Once we're approved, we can send the approval and report to One World Adoptions and request the match to our child in DRC.  The report will be in the hands of Children's Services with our Provincial Government for about 4 - 6 weeks, so it will likely take another 2 months for approval.

DRC Orphans - Give Them Hope

Our Second Meetings for Our Home Study

Today we have our 1:1 meetings/interviews with our Social Worker at the Adoption Agency.  I don't feel anywhere near a nervous, as we've already started the process and we know what to expect for this meeting.
The timing for this meeting is great, as we leave for Mexico tomorrow morning for just over one week.  It's a much needed holiday for the two of us where we can spend time together and get our minds off of the stresses we've encountered the past few months.

The First Meeting of Our Home Studay

On Friday, February 10, our Social Worker, Sterna, came to our home to ask us some questions and see where we live.  She first came in and sat down at our kitchen table to explain the process and we then did a tour of our home so she could see it.  After the tour was done, we went back to our table (where I served Tea, Coffee, and Mini Crave Cupcakes) and we proceeded with the interviews.  She asked us questions on our personalities, how we saw ourselves and how we saw each other.  She asked us questions about our families and our experiences growing up.  
I was nervous for the meeting, because I didn't know what to expect.  It went well.  We have our next meetings, which are individual meetings with Sterna at the Agencies office this Tuesday evening.  She will meet with each of us for an hour and ask some more personal questions.
We would have one meeting after that as a couple and then they will work on completing our Home Assessment report to be sent to Children Services with our provincial government.

Getting Ready for Our Home Study

I've recently resigned from my position in New Home Sales and I'm spending the next week cleaning and getting our home ready for our Home Study.  Our social worker will be coming by at 6 pm on Friday, so we need to make sure our house is in order and we're ready.  This is what I'm currently working on:

1) I will be cleaning out our closets and donating used clothing and shoes
2) I will be donating and recycling old textbooks (I've saved every textbook from University, which are out-dated now and collecting dust).
3) I will be re-arranging furniture to make our home more child friendly
4) I am taking a TOFL course.  This course is not necessary, but would be helpful.  I've always wanted to take it and now is a good time.
5) I'm completing our Self Essays, which need to be done by this Friday.
6) I will also have to drop off a couple more documents with our agency.