I miss FRUA. It is a great support group for families adopting from Eastern Europe. Their chat board is down while they are upgrading the software. My fingers are crossed that it will be back up Wednesday.
I have been reading blogs again. I am so HAPPPPPPPPPPY for the Schnitzel family. They have been trying to adopt from Ukraine since early 2005. They traveled to Ukraine and turned down their referral in December 2006. Then they came home without a child, which isn’t a common experience.
The Schnitzel family decided to try again and traveled back to Ukraine for their second referral in April. They are now adopting twin girls.
Right before I traveled to adopt my darling daughter in 2000, a family returned back from Ukraine without a child. They vented on a public email list. It turned into a nasty flame war. If I remember correctly they blamed their facilitator.
Anyway it scared me to dead… and I started asking around. I pulled together an estimate that around 1% of families return without a child. All the stories were different, but most had 1 core component. The family was set on only adopting a very specific type of child. They weren’t flexible on age, gender or health conditions.
The children that are available at your appointment…. Those are the children available for adoption. If the family cannot accept the first referral, they can get another appointment.
The NAC (Ukrainian adoption authority 1996 to 2006) used to limit families to only 3 appointments. The SDA continues with this policy even though it isn’t supported by law.
Now the NAC workers would sometimes yell at families who returned for a second or third appointment. They would yell at them for being too picky. The family might be told that all orphans were unhealthy.
I thought this yelling was a thing of the past. But this family was yelled during their second appointment for being problems. It sounds like they handled it perfectly. They kept their cool and let the government worker vent. And then they received a referral to their child.
