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Question: Can you adopt an infant from Ukraine?
Answer: Healthy infant under 14 months? No.
If you are open to adopting a child with serious health issues, then it is possible.
And by serious health issues I mean cancer, missing limbs (hand, fingers, arms, legs) or arthrogryposis.
Question: How does a child become available for international adoption?
Answer: To be adoptable in Ukraine, a child must be registered for adoption on the district level for 1 month, followed by 1 month on the state adoption registry. Then the child must be registered 12 months on the national level. During this 14 month period the child is only available to be adopted by Ukrainian citizens.
Ukraine has the longest registration period (14 months total) in the world. If you want to know how many children are adopted by Ukrainian families click here from some statistics.
The Ukrainian government has an official “disease list” which allows a child to be internationally adopted without any waiting period. There used to be a lot of medical issues on this list.
But in February 2002 it was revised. If a child has cancer, missing limbs (hand, fingers, arms, legs) or arthrogryposis they can be adopted before the 14 month period is completed.
Question: How old are the children adopted from Ukraine?
Answer: Many families are adopting children 2 to 5 years of age.
Typically, an orphanage won’t immediately register a child. This is why it is uncommon to adopt a 15 month old child. But it does happen occasionally.
My daughter, for example, was in the orphanage system for over a year before she was registered. I adopted her at 3.5 years of age. She had just fallen off the registry when I met her.
The US Federal Government had to fill out a questionnaire because it is implementing the 1993 Hague Treaty on International Adoption. The US provided adoption statistics for 2001, 2002 and 2003.
When the “disease list” changed in 2002, the number of internationally adopted children under 12 months greatly decreased.
The average age went up in 2002 and 2003 because the “disease list” changed. And more children had to wait the full 14 months before being adopted by international families.
Honestly I thought the average age of adopted children in 2003 was 5 years. But the US government number is lower than that.
