Intercountry Adoption Regulations

The Department’s cost calculations for new reporting and accounting requirements indicate significant cost increases on accredited agencies, without providing specific and cogent data to demonstrate benefits that will accompany these changes. Unfortunately, many agencies believe the Department is significantly underestimating the cost increases. Ultimately it is the adoptive family that bears the burden of the cost. 

If implemented as proposed, the new regulations will prohibit prospective adoptive parents from providing funds for medical care for their child and other critical supports to children pre-placement. The Department of State says that any support provided must be “dissociated from the care of a specific child.” In the past, many families have funded critical surgeries for children with special needs – there is no good reason to end this type of support.

• The proposed regulations will undoubtedly bring more complexity to adoption processes at a time when we already have too few adoptions in respect to the number of waiting children and the number of families open and willing to adopt.
• Currently, expectant and birth parents in the U.S. have the right to select the adoptive parent(s) for their child and in some cases they choose to select a family outside the U.S. such as in Canada. The proposed regulations will, effectively, serve to end outgoing international adoptions from the U.S., thereby eliminating that option for expectant and birth parents.

• It is well recognized that the current rule requiring ten hours of education for prospective adoptive parents is insufficient in both quality and quantity. Yet the Department is proposing no changes at all to these requirements despite widespread calls for improvement in this area from stakeholders across the field of adoption.  
• Lack of meaningful process reform for kinship adoptions - many adoption agency professionals we have heard from say that the proposed changes do not, in practice, change an agency's role or a family's costs. Agencies that do relative adoptions tell us that, should the proposed changes become final, they anticipate no real change from the status quo. Why? Because agencies say the proposed changes describe their current practice instead of implementing real change. Often, when a relative seeks to adopt internationally, time is of the essence and the costs can be prohibitive, yet the new rules do not demonstrate that they will offer much change. Many families cannot afford these costs, and many agencies will not take on the liability of working in a country where they have little experience but will be held responsible for the actions of others they cannot control.