US Embassy Email

Just thought our friends might be interested in the type of information that the US Embassy provides prospective adoptive parents. This one includes some of the most specific information about the kids available for international adoption that I've seen.

Notice on SDAPRC Unused Quotas October 23, 2008 Ukraine: Unused Quotas On October 14, 2008 the Ministry for Family, Youth and Sports published official Order #3899 approving revised procedures for submission of new adoption dossiers from foreign citizens in the fourth quarter of 2008.

The annual adoption dossiers quota for 2008 previously had been set at 1,453. Although all of these were booked within the first months of this year, not all of these families actually submitted dossiers. As a result, the SDAPRC (State Department for Adoptions and Protection of the Rights of the Child) has now opened the unused slots for new adoption dossiers. These slots are not an increase in the annual quota; rather they still fall under the annual limit of 1,453 dossiers. This number is not subdivided by country or by specific categories of children.

The SDAPRC resumed acceptance of new dossiers on October 14th, 2008 and will continue accepting dossiers for 2008 until November 27th, 2008. Order #3899 includes two attachments, one of them presenting the number of children available for intercountry adoptions, sorted by age and health condition, as of September 1, 2008. Please note that these statistics are independent of annual quota set by the Ministry (noted above), but provide a useful overview of ages and health condition of children available for adoption. The second attachment is the schedule for submission of adoption dossiers from foreign adoptive parents. Both documents are below.


Attachment 1

Analysis of the numbers of children available for intercountry adoptions according to their age and health condition(based on the information from the central databank as of September 1, 2008)

Under 3 Year olds
Healthy 0
Serious 551
Total 551

3-5 Year Olds
Healthy 109
Serious 1,215
Total 1,324

6-11 Year Olds
Healthy 3,011
Serious 2,397
Total 5,408

12-17 Year Olds
Healthy 11,337
Serious 3,081
Total 14,408

All children
Healthy 14,457
Serious 7,244
Total 21,701

Healthy=Healthy/Correctible medical conditions
Serious=Serious probably not correctible medical conditions

Ludmyla Volynets, Director of the SDAPRC


Attachment 2

Schedule for submission of the dossiers from foreign adoptive parents in the IV-th quarter of 2008
Day of the week Recommendation for the child’s age from the competent authority of the country of residence of adoptive parents*

Monday: Dossiers for children under 6 years old and those that have no specific limits for the child’s age

Tuesday: Dossiers for children 6-11 years old

Wednesday:

Thursday: Dossiers for children 12 years and older

Ludmyla Volynets,Director of the SDAPRC

*For U.S. citizens this is the recommendation of the social worker in the homestudy


Please do not hesitate to contact us if you have any additional questions. Sincerely, Adoption Unit/Immigrant Visa Section Consular Section American Embassy Kyiv, Ukraine
Tel: 38-044-490-4422
Fax:38-044-490-4570
Kyivadoptions@state.gov
http://kyiv.usembassy.gov/amcit_adoptions_eng.html

In accordance with E.O. 12958 this message is not classified.

Parents Visit

My folks (Jim's) are here for a long weekend visit. Part of the reason that I took a job in Colorado was so that we could be closer. Now they are only a five hour drive away. However I am still unforgiven from the in-laws in Maryland. Just kidding we get along well however Teresa is no longer close enough to pick up mail and check on the house during vacations. It's good to have family, part of what we want to provide for the kids.

Ukrainian Politics Again (We want to be Italians)

Okay this post might get me in trouble.

Since I've had several years to follow Ukrainian politics I've reached the conclusion that they really want to be Italians. Italy has had a change in which coalition is ruling the country nearly every year or two since World War II. Now Ukraine's President has set their third election since the Orange Revolution brought democratic rule to Ukraine in December 2004.

Ukraine's President Yushenko disolved parliment (Rada) and has set snap elections for December 7, 2008. Prime Minister Tymoshenko has appealed to a court in Kyiv which has ruled the President does not have the constitutional authority to call the elections. The President responds that the judge that made the ruling had already been fired.

What does this mean for the adoption. Probably nothing. Even if the elections take place on December 7, it is unlikely that any party will be able to quickly form a ruling coalition. We are hopeful that we will have the kids home in early January and can follow the politics from a safe distance.

http://www.wwitv.com has a good English language channel under the Russian section. Also there is often either a channel in English or English subtitles running under one of the news channels in the Ukrainian section. I also enjoy http://www.kyivpost.com for newpaper coverage as well.

We have our plane Tickets

It was much more frustrating than I had planned on but we are ticketed. We checked online web sites a couple of brick and mortar travel agencies and airline web sites. No one wanted to give us in writing what the actual change fees on an international flight would be. We looked at more flexible tickets and their costs. In the end we found a flight that was shorter more direct (only one stop) less expensive and who would give us the actual change fee in writing.

Kudos to Kayak.com for doing the best job in showing comparisons. I do like the fact that we fly non-stop from JFK in NY to Kyiv.

The flight will still be shorter than the LAX to Auckland, New Zealand, flight I took a few years ago.

Happy, Happy, Happy Dance...

We are going to get our kids.

Я НЕ ПОНИМАЮ

Доброй Ночи, (Do-brey no-chee, Good Night)

Well I've been playing around with the computer for a few months and have been pleasantly surprised to learn that Microsoft includes other languages, alphabets and keyboards. I have reached the conclusion that my learning Russian or Ukrainian is much slower than most of the kids we've met. They pick up English in a matter of months.

The title of this post is a phrase I'll probably use alot. Ya nye pa-nyi-mai-yu means "I don't understand."

Being a little on the cheap side I printed out the Cyrillic alphabet on sticky paper and pasted them on the keyboard. Here's a picture of part of the keyboard. Sorry the lighting is on the poor side.

До Свидания (da sveeyi-dan-ya, Goodbye)

Jim

A Softie

Well I guess it's official, I'm a softie with requests from kids. We've made it a habit not to buy anything from someone doing door to door sales unless it is kids from our neighborhood.

A week or two ago some of the kids came by selling frozen pop sticks. I got one for Teresa and one for me. (she was too slow so I eventually ate hers too) Listening to them talk as they left I realized that they had raided the family refridgerator and were collecting money to buy a video game that their parents didn't want them to get.

I guess I've been too good of a customer because today they wanted to sell me a fifty cent pie for $10.00. I declined and they'll have to figure out another way to buy their games.

I'm not planning to toughen up too soon after the adoption but I know I'll have to draw the line at some point.

Planes, automobiles and hopefully no trains

Well we're working on our plane tickets and it's been more challenging than we were planning on. Because we will not know about our return trip until a few days beforehand we will probably go with tickets that we can change rather than the lowest available fare.

We have found a discount airline in Ukraine called Wizz Air that does really cheap fares between about five cities in Ukraine. Just the name gives me interesting thoughts and as long as we are on the topic Teresa is hopeful that this will help her to avoid the infamous train rides with their bathrooms.

We are planning to arrive a couple of days early to get our bodies readjusted from jetlag. Teresa is threatening to give a female perspective soon.