Where We Went for Adoption Info

We started with www.adoption.state.gov. Quite frankly, this is the most objective, honest and reliable location to obtain information on international adoption.  The front page has a list of the most recent adoption alerts, a link to information on the Hague Convention which controls adoptions from any country that is a member, including Poland, and provides a drop down list to an overview of the process from any country from which it is legal for US citizens to adopt. If any agency tells you to disregard what the State Department says about any country’s adoption process or what children are available, run quickly. 

Then I went to the Council on Accreditation’s website (http://coanet.org/programs/hague-accreditation-and-approval/monitoring-and-oversight/) and found their annually published report on Substantiated complaints and Adverse Actions to find out if this agency had had any in it’s past (at the bottom of the page that the link takes you to). https://coa.my.salesforce.com/sfc/p/300000000aAUSKW3KgJaQWFxUBlC4qqyq7a7W9E  This report lists all substantiated complaints against all agencies authorized to facilitate international adoptions (that means they found evidence to support the complaint’s veracity even if no adverse action was taken).  Some people confuse this report with a simple reporting of ALL complaints made to COA.  That is simply not true.  Complaints are included ONLY if they are substantiated.  You have to make your own judgments about disregarding any complaints which are listed for any agency you are considering.  Our agency had and still has none.

Our agency had told us in our first discussion about Lukasz and the Poland process substantially the same thing the State Department’s website said.  Most significantly, the State Department and our in-country agency representative made it very clear that referrals of young, healthy children (ie, toddler age) are unlikely to be issued to non-Polish citizen families.

Poland is simply too affluent and their citizens too willing adopt Polish children for young, healthy children to need international placement.  Young children placed internationally have medical needs or other special needs.  From experience, we know this is the same reason young, healthy children are very hard to adopt from US child protective services in any state—they are claimed quickly while children with medical and cognitive issues or in sibling groups languish waiting for families from ANYWHERE.