International adoption

[Amelia2024]

Hello, my husband and I really want to adopt a child from abroad. We are looking at adopting from a country where we are from (culturally). We also have family who live in that Country and can help us with that side of things. We only need ICA to help us with the UK side of the adoption process as well be able to do the international side ourselves (with the help of our family).
please can anyone share their experience of international adoption with us and also costs. I know it is more expensive adopting abroad but we want to see if the costs stated on their website are accurate or whether anyone had it exceed their expectations?
We’d also love some information on how long the process took from applying to being accepted and then the child coming to your home. The more info, the better.
thanks in advance x

It's really difficult to advise without knowing the country. ALso intercountry adoption is vanishingly rare these days (and it was never as common as people assumed) so you'll struggle with getting many up to date opinions.

Sorry that isn't helpful. My intercountry journey started 20 years ago and was roughly 3 years from application to home.

Thank you for replying.
the country is Iran, we have already been approved in Iran by the authorities . We did that bit first as we were able to go through the process without incurring big bills to repay. We wanted to make sure we would be applicable before we started the process here and got £xxxxxxz in and find out we couldn’t.
The part we’re interested to understand is if it’s just Coram who do international adoption or if there’s other agencies? Also as we have been approved in Iran, we only need the approval part to be completed in the UK not the placement of a child as they will handle that in Iran directly.
wow 3 years, I thought it was up to 18 months?

You are very lucky, if Coram offered to assess you. They have an open door policy, so when you need post-adoption support, you can call them any time after your adoption. They are fantastic!

@Amelia2024 is the intention that your adopted child would have British citizenship (and does Iran know this..)?

,@Amelia2024

Given the current state of relations with Iran I can imagine this will be quite difficult.
Do you have dual nationality? FCO advice is currently not to travel to Iran with heighted risk of detention/kidnap for UK nationals.
I would think an early consultation with a specialist lawyer to make sure that you would be able to take a child out of Iran and if they would be allowed entry here. Also to establish what the citizenship situation is.

Yes they are aware of this and are fine with it

Yes we have dual nationality and have been advised we can bring the child home to the UK. We are concerned with the relations, however this isn’t anything new. Relations have always been difficult, but we wanted more information on the UK side of it