A little less than a month ago our coordinator made a post that I was really thankful for, explaining why it takes so long to get a referral for a child to adopt when there are millions of orphans in the country.
I know that I have been asked many times why the referral is expected to take so long, and I try to explain it as best as I can, but as an adoption coordinator and an adoptive mom herself, who can explain it better than her?
After reading this post, part of me was thankful for how long it takes, because it could mean that some of those children that might have been referred are instead getting to stay with family, and that is a good thing. Anyways, I hope you enjoy learning a little more about the process in country before it even starts to involve us in the United States.
Copied from http://gillispiefam.blogspot.com/2011/08/how-hard-is-it-to-find-2-orphans.html
"One of my awesome families mentioned today that her family had a hard time understanding why it would take so long to adopt two orphaned boys. How hard could it be to find 2 orphaned boys in a country where there are estimated to be a million orphans? As I wrote out just how hard that can be, I thought maybe others might like to know what goes into it. I think it's common for folks new to international adoption to naively assume it should be an easy thing.
Here's the deal....
1. We don't try to "find" orphans. There is a huge amount of "luck" (fate, destiny, whatever you want to call it) involved simply for orphaned children to ever be known outside of their village.
2. There is NO centralized system in Ghana to track the orphans in the country. No list of kids in orphanages--not even a complete list of orphanages themselves.
3. If two orphaned boys are identified, the first thing we're going to do is try to see if they can remain with their family (immediate or distant)! Second, we're going to see if the boys could possibly be adopted within Ghana, domestically.
4. If the boys can't be adopted domestically and can't stay with biological family, the known biological family has to be counseled about what adoption is (and what it is not). There are LOTS of reasons why a family--even if they can't care for their children--does not want the child to be adopted.
5. If the family wants the boys to be adopted, they also have to know and accept that they will profit NOTHING from giving the boys for adoption. No gifts. No sponsorship. No ongoing support from the adoptive family after the children are in America. Nothing.
6. Even if the immediate family understands all of this and still wants the boys to go for adoption, the head of the family and oftentimes even the village chief must also agree. [Not a legal requirement, but a cultural one, to be sure.]
7. If all of that falls into place (and that is a lot) we have to hope that the boys are in a region that allows adoption (some do not) and that if the region allows adoption, the officials there are not corrupt (some are).
8. If ALL of that happens, THEN these boys could be recommended for adoption by Social Welfare--being made free for adoption."
I am going to add a postscript here as well- after step 8, people are contacted mainly in order of how long they have been waiting, also keeping in mind the perimeters that they specified on healthiness, age, sex of the child etc. So even if a child makes it through all the hoops to be able to be adopted, they might not come to our family because other people have been waiting longer or they might be too old for what we are looking for.
It could be a long wait. The silver lining is that most families don't wait over a year for referral. I know, small silver lining, but I hold on to that as a reasonable timeline, and some kind of direction for my life, and if it is shorter, yay! If we happen to be one of the over the year ones (sigh) then I trust it is for a reason, and God wants Blake and I to enjoy more non-kid time together and for me to spend more time with the students I encounter.
As of May 12th, Anita had shared this:
"Do you know how long our longest waiting family has been waiting? Less
than 5 months! At the beginning of the year we had a family who had
waited 22 months for referral. Even last week we had a few families who
had been waiting over a year. But now we're making referrals to
families who have only been waiting 5 months! Several families this
year have received referrals almost immediately because they were open
to children over six; and all of our "long-waiting" families have now
been matched."
Definitely a positive! And that information also gives me hope. You can see from the ticker that we are obviously not the longest waiting family at the moment (especially since as of May 12th I don't think we were even on the list!) But people are getting matched, children are getting referred, and our time will come. :-D
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