1. First you decide on a country. We chose Ukraine because of my family background. As we grew up with knowledge of our culture, it seemed like a no-brainer. Also, Ukraine does a blind referral process which means you choose the child. And finally, the way the Ukrainian system is set up it is 100% impossible for human traffickers to move children out of the country, or remove them from poverty-stricken families for payment. Kids must be in state care for a total of 14 months before they are even eligible for international adoption. There is no "reserving" an attractive blonde haired blue-eyed chubby baby. It's all luck of the draw in a single database for the entire country.
2. Then you apply with your provincial youth services to be assigned a social worker who will do your home study. But before they assign you anybody, you have to prove to the provincial youth services you have no criminal background and you meet the province's criteria for adoption. If I remember correctly, we had to provide police checks, a marriage certificate (if applicable), and proof of identity and 4 character references each from friends, family, your employer, etc.
3. You do the home study. This consists of 6-8 appointments with the social worker, they are about an hour each time. You get interviewed together, and then separately in private. You are asked about your marriage, your childhood, why you want to adopt, how you intend to parent, your life priorities, etc. Pretend you are on Oprah. If all is good, they let you know that you'll be approved on the last visit. Then they write up a summary report (about 12-15 pages) on everything you discussed stating you are fit to adopt. The social worker gives the specifics: the age of the child that would be the best match for your family, any special needs you can cope with, etc. This sort of straddles what you told them you would want and who they think you can best parent.
4. Now comes the fun part! You start writing cheques and filling out a million forms, while staying abreast of law changes in the chosen country that will make you rip up some of what you filled out half a month later, to be replaced by 3 new things somebody wants over there. Everything has an expiration date. So if one thing you got 6 weeks ago expires even a DAY after the rest of the submitted stuff, it's useless and you start back at square one. You can imagine how much fun this is, with 2 sets of government employees trying their hardest to keep their jobs alive as they smoothly cruise towards retirement. It's kind of like the airport experience in Hong Kong- where it takes 6 airport employees to guide you 30 feet to the waiting taxis that you can plainly see outside the window. Keep the economy going, people!
5. Once everything is in, each page notarised by a lawyer who legally (for some mysterious reason) is only allowed to notarise 10 pages a day (for all of your agency's files for all the adopting couples) in the embassy in Ottawa. Your adoption agent must be present, you cannot courier anything. This means our lady spends at least 3 days a week in her car driving the 2.5hrs back and forth from Montreal. If everything is good to go, you will get a number in a queue (a waiting time of about a year) where your completed file is ALLOWED to be sent to Ukraine for review. If there are no mistakes and their youth services over there approves you, then yay! If not, if there is a mistake with your file (somebody spelled something wrong, or they feel the signatures don't match, or any other thing down to the tiniest detail) your entire file will be rejected and you will have to start right back at the beginning: re-filling out all the paperwork again, getting new documents required with the matching dates so nothing expires, and then waiting another 6-12 months to get a new review date in Ukraine. Or you give up and choose another country.
6. After your long-awaited appointment date for your file to be reviewed in Ukraine, the rest happens pretty quickly. Ukraine has 20 days to reply to your approved file with a letter of "Invitation to Travel" to the country's Adoption Center in Kiev, with an appointment to show up on a particular day. On that day you wait with a bunch of other couples from all over the world in line at the Adoption Center until it is your turn to go in. They hand you and your agency facilitator however many files of kids available in their database on that fateful given day to review. (Ukraine keeps an incredible amount of medical and family background information on each child- this is another reason we chose Ukraine.) You choose a child, and leave with a letter of permission to visit whichever orphanage they are stationed in, which could be anywhere in the country.
7. You meet the child. If all goes well and you are a good fit to be their parents, then you petition the Ukrainian court for formal adoption. I am leaving out all the red tape around that; because there is a lot of running around to do over there... getting a birth cert form whichever village the child is from (which could be on the opposite side of the country), you obtain a passport for the child, etc etc. You eventually appear before a judge who truly does decide if they will allow the adoption based upon all your info they review which has been translated and re-notarised by another set of Ukrainian lawyers. Again, you hope for no problems or mistakes.
That's about as far as I'll go, the rest is all about returning home and tying up loose ends. Submitting citizenship stuff to Canada, doing yearly progress reports on your child including photographs for the Ukrainian authorities until they turn 18. Etc.
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