# Intercountry adoption



## Yogamini (May 13, 2016)

My partner and I are nearing the end of our assisted Fertility journey and I would love to hear from anyone with personal experience in intercountry adoption?


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## Tictoc (Aug 20, 2015)

Hi - I've adopted internationally - what would you like to know?

Just as a bit of information my internationally adopted daughter was oldest at placement of my 3 adopted children - she was 12 months and uk adoptees both younger. She also has the most emotional problems due to severe neglect in those first 12 months.


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## Yogamini (May 13, 2016)

Thanks for replying Tic-toc.
Gosh, that's great you have experience in adopting internationally and locally! Congratulations on your wonderful family! We are still processing failed ivf cycles and want to give ourselves a bit of time before moving to adoption. Hoping to attend open nights in intercounty and local to get a feel for both before deciding which route to take. 

How do both experiences compare.. Intercounty and local?

I have concerns adopting locally because of the open adoption system. How have you and the children found the experience? 

Our local authority charges around 6000 pounds for the paperwork and processing for intercounty adoption. Are additional fees charged by the country you're adopting from?
How did you find the length of process of intercounty adoption compared with local?
What age were your children when you adopted them?
Did you have enough support from your local authority post adoption?
Did you adopt intercounty first and then move to local because of your experience?
Did you adopt from a Hague convention country? 

How did you decide which country to adopt from?

We're you married when you adopted? We have been together 19 years but are not married. Will this be an issue?

Was age an issue for you? I am 40 & my partner 45. Would ideally like to adopt a child under 12 months old. Is this realistic? 

Thanks,
Yoga x


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## Tictoc (Aug 20, 2015)

Have PM'd you


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## babyking (Sep 25, 2016)

Hi

We too are wondering about intercountry adoption and would like to hear about costs, length of process, best countries to adopt from and likelihood of getting a child under 12 months at our age .I am 44 husband is 47

TIA


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## Tictoc (Aug 20, 2015)

Length of process - you have to go through the exact same process in the Uk for approval and then it passes over to your in country agency. For us from when we started to when we brought our daughter home I think it was 18 months - we did have a few issues on the way though.

Costs - will depend on what country you choose and I have actually deleted all my files with castings but this will give you an idea.
C£7k for your assessment by social workers and to take you to panel
C£2k to FCO for stamping your papers allowing them to be sent to country of choice.
C£2k to DfE for processing your application
C£2k to UK border agency for letter stating you are approved and will be allowed to bring child back into country.
We paid about £2k for a notary to in UK to notarised all the relevant documents - they were specialised in adoption for the country we adopted from.
There is cost of visa to bring baby home which was about £1k at the time we adopted.

Cost of translation of documents into language of country of choice.

We had to visit country 3 times with final visit being a month long as we waited for UK visa. So costs of flights, visas to visit if relevant, hotel stays, translators out there (ie for court dates)

You will need to get a private medical for the paper as well as this is required for your matching back in the Uk.

Finally there is the cost you pay to the agency out there. For us we paid about the same in country as we did in the Uk which included all our paperwork, translation, court case etc etc. 

Yes I think it is still possible to get a child under 12 months but that’s also the case in the Uk. 

I believe there is a programme from Kazakhstan nowadays but I’m not really up to speed on what other countries remain open for inter country adoption.


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## Tictoc (Aug 20, 2015)

For the baby not the paper


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## babyking (Sep 25, 2016)

This has been so helpful, thank you so much. we just shelled out about 25,000 for IVF and we can't afford to spend a lot again, so inter country is looking too expensive to us unfortunately. Is national adoption costly? I am sorry it took so long to reply.


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## Tictoc (Aug 20, 2015)

Do you mean domestic adoption? In the Uk there is no cost for domestic adoption aside from getting your medicals and paying for the adoption order - totals around £250.

We have done both international and domestic adoption and we are obviously glad we went down the international route or we wouldn’t have our daughter but honestly if we had been able to get anyone to assess us domestically we wouldn’t have done the international. Luckily once we were proven adopters it was easier to get someone to take us on for a domestic adoption.


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## babyking (Sep 25, 2016)

Hi

Do you know what sort of odds we would have, at our age, of getting a baby or very young toddler.


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## Tictoc (Aug 20, 2015)

IM sorry but I can’t really answer that. The best thing for you to do is phone all local authorities within an hour of where you are. They will have a better idea of what chances you have.

44 and 47 is not particularly old in adoption though.

Be prepared for rejection though - it’s a tough process and you would be unusually lucky if the first LA you phoned was the one you ended up with.


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