Statistics

On April 30, 2007 I volunteered to keep statistics on how long it takes to submit a dossier and get an appointment for Ukrainian adoption. I will be updating this page (popping it to the top) when I update the statistics. I received an email pointing out that each adoption is different. There is no such thing as an average Ukrainian adoption. I agree with this. However as an adoptive parent, I want some guidance. And I think statistics can help with this. I have received information from 23 American, Canadian and French families. They started their adoptions in 2005, 2006 and 2007. Here are the dossier quotas. Ukraine is limiting the acceptance of dossiers based on the adoptive parent's nationality. And the SDAPRC has a Complex Mathematical Formula that determines… [more]

I started AC's story in Returning Home Without Child. AC is a Canadian who very recently traveled to Ukraine with her husband. They had 2 appointments and couldn't find a child 24 months or younger. The SDAPRC is limiting families to 3 appointments. During the appointment (1 hour meeting at SDAPRC's Kyiv office), the SDAPRC will provide information on 3 to 5 children. The family will ask for more information and then accept 1 referral. After meeting with the child at the orphanage, the family can decide to turn down the child's referral. Then they return to the SDAPRC's office for their second appointment and referral. If the family fails to accept this second… [more]

FRUA is still down. I miss it so much. Like many others, I use FRUA to see how dossier submission is going... and what appointment dates have been issued. So I have decided to volunteer to gather statistics on dossier submissions and appointment dates. Have you completed a Ukrainian adoption? Are you in the middle of a Ukrainian adoption? I would like to ask you some questions. I will take whatever information you are comfortable with. I will respect your privacy and will only post average statistics. Started Adoption: Nov 2005 Dossier Completed: Jan 2006, Jan 2007 Submitted Dossier: Feb 2007 Days for dossier to be approved: 39 Appointment Date: June 2007 Adoption Completed: July 4, 2007 Nationality: American If you are waiting to submit your… [more]

The Ukrainian government has started restricting the number of international adoptions. This is partly good news. It makes the adoption process more predictable. During the last 2 years it has been a roller coaster. It was a combination of shutdowns and reorganizations. Many families gave up on adopting from Ukraine. I said on March 26 that this quota system wasn't impacting Americans yet. The quota is on the number of submitted dossiers. And it is controlled per quarter. Americans are allowed 558 dossiers per year. This is 139 dossiers per quarter. I heard that Americans were slightly over their quarterly quota. But the SDA decided to accept dossiers on March 26 because it… [more]

Ukrainian regulation is now restricting the number of adoptions. And it has already impacted the Canadians. Ukraine will only accept 24 dossiers from Canadians for 2007. And 24 dossiers have been submitted. So far the quota isn't impacting Americans. Americans are still able to submit dossiers once a week (Monday). Everyone has been trying to figure out the formula that the SDA is using. It sets how many dossiers can be submitted per country during a calendar year. And no one has had any luck. Then I received the email below (it is at the bottom) from the US Embassy about the SDA's complex mathematical formula. It just made me laugh... how complex can it be. And why can't they… [more]

From 2001 to 2003, I had a survey that I called Angela's Expectations vs Outcome in Ukrainian Adoption. I was very fortunate and 217 families participated in this survey. The survey included families who adopted from 1998 to 2003. 85% of the families in the survey were Americans. The remaining were French, Danish, German, Israeli, Irish and Spanish. In this survey I asked 28 questions. One question was which oblast (state) families adopted from. 80% of the children were adopted from 11 oblasts. Here is the list of oblasts and the percentage of adopted children. Donetsk.............16.97% Crimea..............10.09% Zaporizhzhya.........9.63% Odesa................9.63% Lugansk..............7.80% Kharkiv..............6.42% Kyiv.................6.42% Transcarpathia.......4.59% Dniepropietrovsk.....2.75% Poltava..............2.75% Mykolayiv............2.75% One of the first things that I looked at was population. Were families just adopting more children from more populous oblasts? Yes and No. There are 24 oblasts and… [more]

Continuing from part 1. Here is another paragraph that was a problem for me. In some cases, reform campaigns are coupled with skepticism toward foreign adoption, including concern about occasional cases of abuse. Romania has banned adoptions by foreigners except for relatives; Ukraine and Kazakhstan insist that foreign parents submit regular reports on adoptees. From: Tightened rules lower adoptions of foreign babies Oops.. someone didn't fact check. Romania banned international adoptions in 2001. Some pipeline cases continued to be processed. And then in 2004, Romania made international adoption illegal except for biological grandparents. This has nothing to do with adoptions in 2006. Specifically about Ukraine and abuse... Yes there were concerns. They were dealt with publicly. No secrets...

• Single dad who adopted from Ukraine was found guilty of molesting

The news media has jumped all over the 2006 visa numbers from the US State Department. These visas numbers reflect the number of children adopted internationally by Americans. I think the stories are puff pieces... over blown... generalizations... too simple. After tripling in the past 15 years, the number of foreign children adopted by Americans dropped sharply in 2006, the result of factors that have jolted adoption advocates and prompted many would-be adoptive parents to reconsider their options. From: Tightened rules lower adoptions of foreign babies Give me a break... The 2006 via numbers are about the same as 2002 numbers. If I am generious and round up, 2006 adoptions were 11% lower then 2005 adoptions.

• 2006 - 20,679
• 2005 - 22,728
• 2004 - 22,884
• 2003

Thinking about adopting from Ukraine? Me too... I have been thinking about adopting a second child from Ukraine for a while now. I have always wanted to parent 2 children. I think the sibling relationship is important. But things got in the way.. finances, work, special needs that turned out to be more special the I realized. I posted why I adopted from Ukraine in 2000. And it did involve analyzing some statistics. So once again I analyzed the number of children adopted by Americans by country. I took the adoption numbers from the US State Department. I compared the percentage of increase in number of adoptions from 2006 to 2005, 2005 to 2004 and 2004… [more]

Terry Hallman (American living in Ukraine) wrote an blog/opinion piece that he titled Ukraine's Death Camps for Children. I really didn't like the emotional language that he choose to use. I did an informal poll. I cannot find a single person (friend, family or stranger in the parking lot) who didn't think Holocaust when I said "death camp". But Terry and a few other folks don't seem to understand why his useage of "death camp" triggers some negative reactions. I blogged about my background in relationship to the Ukrainian orphanage system. I adopted from a very poor specialized (handicapped) orphanage in a rural village right outside of Kharkiv. I have been bugged by my response… [more]