Ethiopia Program Webinar

I participated in a Webinar provided by CHSFS regarding their Ethiopian adoption program. Here are some questions/answers from this that I found helpful and happen to be questions others have asked of me.

Question: My question is if CHSFS can give an estimated wait time by age and gender. For example parents that are looking to adopt a girl 0-12 months are waiting 15 months, parent adopting 0-36 months are waiting 12 months. I know there are many variables that affect the time but I think the more information you have the better families can cope with waiting.

Answer: No we can't. We don't have a way of knowing exactly what child is going to come in to care when. This is the reason that we have a wide window (12 to 18 months) as our estimated wait time. When we try to get more specific than that, we are setting everyone up for disappointment. In general, we can say that if you are open to a child over the age of 36 months, and/or with more medical issues, your wait will be on the short end of the spectrum.

Question: When you are discussing wait times, please be very clear on the starting event of the wait time. In the past, in other discussions with CHSFS, I have heard "6 months" or "12 months," but it has never been made clear to me as far as 12 months from when or what event? I am assuming it is 12 months from the "officially waiting" designation, but that has not been made clear in the past.

Answer: The wait is meant to start at what we consider to be your "starting point" IN the Ethiopia program. Right now the starting point is considered to be when you turn in your dossier.

Question: When is the expected court closure and will referrals be given through out the closure?

Answer: The federal court's closure occurs during the months of August and September. We hope to continue making referrals during the closure, although families must understand that the acceptance of a referral during the closure means the total wait time to get a court date and decision will be that much longer.

Question: What is the average length of time between referral and court dates?

Answer: Eight to 12 weeks.

Question: Do you think the courts in Ethiopia will expand staffing to accommodate for these increases in adoption cases so we get through court in a more timely manner?

Answer: CHSFS and the Joint Council of International Children's Services (JCICS) is working positively with the Ethiopian government to make sure the adoption process is efficient. This advocacy work, however, is limited by the administrative needs and challenges that are a part of the federal bureaucracy in other countries. There is a rumor that the federal Ethiopian court has hired 3 more judges, but this has not been confirmed by our source close to the court's affairs.

Question: Why are there so few children from Ethiopia on the waiting child list?

Answer: Ethiopia does not have a waiting international child (WIC) program, per se, as other countries do, e.g., China and Korea. This means that children from Ethiopia are not referable for adoption unless there is a presumptive family known by the placing agency. In other words, licensed orphanages and/or partnering agencies do not seek children with a specific special need. Nor can placing agencies put the photographs of children on the internet to recruit interested families. In short, the only children viewable on our WIC list are those children for whom there was a qualified and approved family; that in fact did not accept or match in the end, with the individual child(ren). One example of this is a child who ends up, upon a thorough medical examination, to be older than originally stated.

Question: Given recent concerns about abuses of the adoption system in Ethiopia, what safeguards does CHSFS have in place to prevent any possibilities of encouraging child trafficking?

Answer: Children's Home Society & Family Services Ethiopia (CHSFS-ET) does what we consider to be the best child background investigation work of any international agency working in Ethiopia. In other words, we believe no other agency does a better job than CHSFS-ET to verify the personal history and background information that is presented on the child by the licensed orphanage at the time of referral. A social worker, an interpreter and a videographer work as a team to corroborate the child's background and information related to how the child came into legal care and custody of the orphanage. In addition, most of the adoptions facilitated by CHSFS Ethiopia are sole parent or guardian relinquishments, In the vast majority of these cases, the adoptive parents meet and talk with the birth family and/or child's former legal guardian in what is a private entrustment ceremony between the two parties.

Question: What experiences are families having waiting for sibling groups of two or more children and various ages?

Answer: I think you are asking what is the current wait time. Most recently, the wait for a sibling group of two young children (under the age of 6) has been up to 18 months.