There is going to be a press conference tomorrow June 29 July 3 with the Ministry of Family, Youth and Sports. Topic is the opening of the SDA to the public.

For anyone new to Ukrainian adoption.

• All Ukrainian adoption has been shutdown for the last few months (April, May and June). This is to allow Ukraine to transition their adoption processing from the Education Ministry to the Family, Youth and Sports Ministry. Child protective services are already under the Family, Youth and Sports Ministry. The new adoption department is called State Department on Adoption and Children's Rights. Many people are calling it SDA.


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• If you have read about AC or NAC... this was the old adoption department under the Education Ministry that has been shut down. The SDA has been started up with all new people. No one seems to have transfer from the old to the new department.

Other rumor is that the SDA will open on July 3.

Open.... meaning that they will accept new dossiers and start mailing out appointment dates. (fingers crossed on this one.) Hopefully the press conference tomorrow will let us know if this is true.

And I know that American families really want to find out if the restrictions (only allowed to adopt siblings of previously adopted children, handicapped, 10 years or older) will be removed.

Israeli, German, Spanish and Canadian families don't have any restrictions on them because all their post adoption reports are turned in. American and French families still have the restrictions. I haven't heard about Italian families.

Another rumor.... special favored facilitators have been allowed to turn new dossiers in already. I really don't like these types of rumors because one of two things is happening. There really is a special relationship. Or the potential adoptive parent is being conned by a facilitator.

Ukraine operates on doing favors for a friend-of-a-friend. It is part of the culture. I am not really upset of this. I really don't like it when anyone gets conned.

Based on Ukraine's 2004 international adoption numbers here is a breakdown on the nationality of the adoptive parents. The second column is a percentage of total adoptions. There was a total of 2,058 international Ukrainian adoptions in 2004. 723 of these children were adopted by American citizens.

(723 / 2058) * 100 = 35%

So if the adoption restrictions aren't removed, Ukrainian international adoption could decrease by 40%. We shall see..