Adoption and Unavailable Orphans

I admire couples who decide to adopt children internationally (yes, even the celebrities). Aside from the beauracracy and the staggering expenses, couples also deal with the heart ache of becoming attached to a child and learning that child is unavailable because he/she still has family ties with their family.

In ony of my visits to the orphanage, I remember one morning where a Ukrainian family came to take a child home. The grandfather of the child came accompanied by the child's mother. The two of them met with orphanage supervisors to discuss the possibility of taking the child back. My reaction to a case like this is split. On the one hand, I know that children belong in families and so I was happy this child's caretaker had returned. Yet, the mother of the child was accompanied by the grandfather (I believe this was necessary to prove to the orphanage staff that in case the mother was incapable of caring for the child, the grandfather would step in as caretaker) which suggested to me this mother was possibly unprepared. Would the child fare well in such a scenario? I hoped so.

I can imagine how hard it is for foreign couples to meet a child, form a connection, want to adopt and then find out that child still has family ties. I believe the Ukrainian goverment is very sensitive to the desires of parents who give their children up for adoption, but try to retain connection with the child. It is also my understanding that the Ukrainian government prefers for an orphan to be adopted back by the child's original family or a Ukrainian couple. I noticed that in adoptions, some foreign couples are duped into thinking they are adopting a healthy child and then when they arrive in Ukraine, that child is swapped for a child with a physical and mental disabilities and/or is sick and unwell. Or sometimes, the orphanage staff misleads the adopting couple/individual (this applies to both Ukrainian and foreign couples or individuals) into thinking the child they are adopting is free of medical problems.

Working with disabled orphans, my heart goes out to all the disabled children who need to be adopted. Speaking of family ties, there was this one child, B, who had something like CP and was already much older, around 16 years of age. His family would take him on vacation every summer but he would live at the orphanage year around. What made things even more complex in B's case, was that B was a twin and his twin did not have a disability. Ughh, this stuff racks my brain sometimes. I have mini ethical breakdowns when I think of this stuff for too long.

In B's case and I'm sure there are other children like him, families cannot handle the responsibility of caring for a child with disabilities. Whether they can actually handle or do not want to, is hard to say. I am sure the difficulty in caring for a child with a disability in Ukraine is a spectrum. All I can say is I want it to change. I want more families to keep their children even when they are born with disabilities. There are definitely outlets and support available to these people in Ukraine. I know because I learned about a lot of them while doing my Fulbright. It is still hard in small villages located in remote areas. But little by little, I think the perception of disability will change if more parents are willing to step up to the challenge of caring for a child with a disability.