Archive for the 'Adoption' Category

We received an email today from the Australian Embassy in Chile requesting various documents and medical reports to complete the visa application. This was mostly just for our information – everything is taken care of between the adoption support agency and the orphanage, including arranging for health checks for Andres.

We asked whether this tells us anything about when things will be completed and when it means we can travel – but there’s still quite a bit of paperwork to do yet, so still no definite date for leaving.

We’ve been busy – out shopping pretty much every weekend and Thursday nights as well, researching and trying to find all the bits and pieces we need.

We’ve also been starting to put together our packing – it’s quite a bit more complicated than planning our backpacking trip to South America last year, since this time we also need to look after an infant while we are away – there’s just so much extra stuff to take and to think about!

Kingparrot Scout Cot/Junior Bed

We made our first big purchase today – put a cot on layby. We would have just paid for it and taken it home, but we had already measured the box they come in and discovered that there is simply no way it would fit in our car (Daihatsu Charade hatchback). So we arranged for them to hold the cot until we could arrange with Leanne’s sister to bring her partner’s ute. The store wanted to charge $50 delivery – which I thought was far too much to pay given we are just down the road. Heck, if I had a decent hand cart, I could have walked home with it.

Anyway, we got the Kingparrot Scout Cot, which converts into a junior bed. It’s a nice heritage teak colour which is similar in colour to what we have in our own bedroom. It was also one of the models recommended by Choice magazine, which was a bonus.

We have ordered a few other bits and pieces online and expect them to be delivered over the coming weeks. I’ll write more about them later and will write reviews of stuff that we take away with us – once we have a chance to test them!

As part of the adoption application process – we needed to get quite a few official documents together, including birth certificates, marriage certificate, medical reports, employment reports, police good behaviour certificates, plus copies of passports and such.

These documents were only considered valid for 12 months, so as a final part of the application process before we could travel, we had to get these all updated and sent across to Colombia.

The police good behaviour certificates required finger-print checks, and when we originally got these done in late 2007, it was a messy process with ink. It’s not just the tips of your fingers, it is also the whole finger, the palm, the sides of the hand and more – so your entire hand ends up covered in ink, and you have to scrub them clean afterwards.

This time at least, they had installed digital fingerprint scanners, which were quite a bit cleaner to use. It takes a few weeks to get the reports done – but we managed to collect them yesterday – after a few phone calls they agreed for me to drive to police headquarters in Parramatta to pick them up.

My passport was sent off last week and I paid extra for priority processing (48 hour turnaround), but of course that didn’t take Australia post into account, who seem to always take 2 days to deliver express post items, despite the supposed “guaranteed overnight delivery”! Fortunately it arrived today, so I rushed down to the post office to collect it, managed to find a photocopier at the local library (which was open at just the right time!), and was then able to put all the documentation together and express post it over to the adoption support agency so that they could arrange for everything to be translated and notorised before being sent to the orphanage.

So now that this has been sent, we just have to wait. We have been told to expect about 4 or 5 weeks wait before we get approval to travel, at which point we will need to get to Colombia pretty quickly – so we need to spend this time getting ready.

Given that we weren’t expecting to be allocated so soon, we haven’t actually bought anything like cots, prams, car seats yet – but we have at least been researching stuff, so we have a bit of an idea about what we want to get. It’s going to be a busy few weeks!

We had the meeting with our contracted adoption assessor (social worker) today who had the information pack from DoCS (sent over by the orphanage in Colombia) with the details of our son, Andres who is currently just over 5 months old.

Having the photo makes it very real now – this is very exciting, we are really looking forward to travelling to Colombia to collect him.

Also, the timing of being allocated is perfect in relation to our uni studies. We had been debating about whether we should continue with our studies this semester or defer, but now that we have been allocated we have decided to defer – and census date is today, so we were able to pull out without financial or academic penalty (although I’m sure they would have approved extenuating circumstances!). So even though it upsets our uni plans for the year (we were hoping to be finished by the end of the year) at least we get to save some money (about $3300 between the two of us) this semester and we will revisit our plans in second semester.

I got a call from DoCS at around 2pm this afternoon informing us that we have received an allocation of a child to adopt from an orphanage in Colombia. All along we had been told 18 – 24 months from the time our application was approved by Colombia – which would make it mid-year at the earliest, and more likely towards the end of 2009. To be allocated so soon caught us completely off guard, but after a brief period of panic, we are ecstatic and so very excited.

For those of you who knew nothing about our adoption plans (even our parents and family didn’t know until mid 2007), here is a quick rundown on the process so far:

Mid 2005 – we decided to investigate adoption – contacted DoCS

October 2005 – received adoption information package from DoCS, including some booklets and an Expression of Interest form, which we filled in and sent back

December 2005 – received advice that our Expression of Interest form had been screened and we had been deemed eligible to attend a Preparation for Adoption seminar. The next available seminar was in March 2006, which we booked in for.

March 2006 – attended 2 day Preparation for Adoption seminar at DoCS offices in Parramatta.

April to August 2006 – writing “life story” and gathering other required information to submit with application to DoCS.

August 2006 – application for adoption completed and submitted to DoCS.

March 2007 – meetings with our contracted adoption assessor, first together, then individually. Report from these meetings sent to DoCS as part of assessment process.

July 2007 – approval from DoCS, we have been deemed “eligible and suitable”

August to December 2007 – gathering documentation for application to Colombia, including psychological evaulation, birth and marriage certificates, medical and employment certificates, police good behaviour certificates (including fingerprint check!). During this time we also needed to get at least 3 written personal references together from friends. This turned out to be quite time consuming, since there were quite specific requirements and we needed to ask some of our referees to rewrite what they had written.

Dec/Jan 2008 – we finally got our documents together and sent to the adoption agency to be translated, notarised, etc. Once this was done, our file was sent to the orphanage in Colombia to be approved and then to await allocation.

Jan 2008 – we took a 6 week holiday to South America, not to Colombia, instead we went south to the Patagonia region. One thing we did do was to make sure we spent a few days in Santiago (Chile) and Buenos Aires (Argentina) to familiarise ourselves with these cities, since it was likely we would be travelling through one (or both) when we travelled for the adoption. You can read more about this trip in our trip journal:

March 2009 – we received a call from the adoption agency asking us to start getting our documents updated, since the documents sent to Colombia are only considered valid for 12 months. This meant getting a new psych report, new fingerprint checks, medical reports, financial reports and copies of our various documents. We also decided I should get a new passport given that I may need more than 12 months validity to get a visa and my old passport expires in December this year. We still had no idea at this point that we were about to be allocated a child – we just thought this was part of the process and joked about being annoyed if we were still waiting in 12 months time and had to do it all for a third time!

We had just heard that another couple had been allocated a child – which meant that we were next in the queue, hence the request to update our documents. We still weren’t anticipating being allocated a child until well into the second half of the year – we had been discussing our final two uni subjects and had just started a subject this semester and were thinking that we may have to pull out of something next semester if we got allocated. We were certainly not expecting to be allocated a child during first semester!

So we are in a bit of a daze right now. We have a meeting on Friday with our contracted adoption assessor who has a file with all the details of the child we have been allocated – including a photo! We are so excited, and a little bit scared – it is becoming all very real now.