No Appointment

Just back from having lunch after going to the Dept. The result is bupkis. Evidently there were no little girls left, as they were all taken by the end of the morning, in addition to the fact that the remaining files in the afternoon were all unhealthy kids left over. So rather than waste the last appt, we were advised to be sick so we could buy some more time for ourselves.

The kinda sad thing is that the other couple who has been here for 6 weeks and was on their last shot today chose a child, but it looks like it’s a 50/50% chance of the little boy turning out to be adoptable. If not, they will be returning home with no child after all of this. I hope it doesn’t come down to that for them.

Things in Ukraine are getting pretty bad for international adoption. 5 years ago it was another story- you could be a single person, have had cancer, and have been in your late 50’s and you would have been given a selection of healthy, happy kids. But with governments and agendas changing, it is a different story today- even from just a year ago. The Ukrainian government has put into place a system where Ukrainian couples are paid to foster kids with no intention to adopt, just to get them out of orphanages. This sounds like it could be a good thing, as living in a family would seem to be better than living in an institution, however what happens is that for each child that is in state care, they get a bank account with money from the state that is there for them as they grow up. The problem is before this system was put into place was that less than 1% of Ukrainians would adopt children. Now people are doing it for the benefit of the available money, draining the child’s account and when the money is gone they are bounced back into state care because they can no longer afford to take care of them anymore. So tell me, who wins under that system? The people who work within it just hate it- they want to see kids get permanent, loving families instead of being treated like a human boomerang.

Because of the shortage of children available and this new program, there has been a lot of talk in the past year to shut down Ukraine for international adoption, period. They have tried to pass it into law 3 times, and the next vote will be in December. So right now, we are the last wave of adoptive parents in Ukraine, similar to how China had tens of thousands of baby girls in state care for adoption, and now there are none- with the waiting time for Chinese adoption currently at 6-8 years. After all of us this fall, it’s dicey. In any case, with what we’ve experienced so far, I can’t say that I would recommend Ukraine for international adoption. It’s not because of the people or the country- it is beautiful here and the people are beyond wonderful- it’s the system and the games you have to play within it. It’s a damn shame, because the ones who suffer the most are the kids who really have no voice in the entire situation.

So today we submit our notarised paper indicating the meeting missed due to illness, it goes up then down the food chain, and then we will get our absolutely last chance 3rd appointment where it’s make or break. We have no idea when this could be, 2 weeks, 3 weeks… who knows. But we’ll be living in a 15 minute alarm zone the entire time- if Xenia hears about a file for a little girl, we’ll be called and possibly be told to get our butts down there ASAP.

Now I’m going for a nap to try and get rid of my migraine. Thanks for the prayers and support, everyone. Back to the waiting game.