Intercountry Info please!!!!!!!

[LittleOneFair]

Hi there. My partner and I are planning on an adoption from another country - namely Africa. We are in scotland and I was wondering if anyone had any advice on this or knows of an agency to go through because all the ones I can find are in England.

Thanks
x

You could contact you LA adoption team and tehy should be able to advise you.

Just wondering, is ther any particular reason for choosing a child from Africa? There is huge demand for adopters of Scottish children - we're in the process of adopting a family.

Bop

Your LA are unlikely to know much about it unless they done one. Best source of advice is Intercountry ADoption Centre (ggolge tehm I think they have a phone advice number) and OASIS who also have a website.

There are no agencies as such - your LA will assess you the same as for domestic but then you will be on your own to find an overseas agency to work with you.

Be warned, African countries tend not to be the easiest places to adopt from into the UK. ALso be warned that you may face some fairly testing questions during your homestudy about how you are going to make a blakc (presumably) child feel "normal" in your family if you live in a very white area.

As others have said there are some difficulties associated with adopting from African countries. For all we know, the OP may be of African origin and/or Africa born and bred though since they have described Africa as "a country" I'm not sure.

Some African countries only allow adoption by residents and some only by citizens. Malawi is an example - although Madonna will have gone through the same rigorous adoption approval process in the UK, I believe, as other overseas adopters, she appears to have been given special treatment, as normally adopters are required to live in the country for a while before returning home with their child.

Some African countries (e.g. Ethiopia) do allow overseas adoption by non-residents, but as with other types of overseas adoption (and as Kewcumber has said) the process will make you think about how you would help a child to fit in.

drspouse - I don't think Madonna was approved in the UK - I think she claimed to be ordinarily resident in the US and went through their system. I'm not absolutely sure about that but beleive it to be the case.

I had the same thought as Drspouse though - don;t describe Africa as "a country" to your social worker, they'll be a bit dubious about you being able to keep your childs traditions and culture alive (one of the thigns you will have to convince them) if you can't distinguish a country from a continent!

Yes I'm sure you are right about Madonna Kew.................various things made me think that anyway.
I would agree the Intercountry Adoption Centre is a good place to start. They run Information Days for people at the very early stages of thinking of intercountry adoption and have information sheets on various countries which you can download.
You would need to have a specific country in mind so worth doing some research since many African countries are not open to foreign adopters. Whether or not the op is of African origin they would have needed to consider how a child would feel being raised in a predominantly white country which still has mostly exclusively white areas. Your LA should assess you for intercountry adoption but you'll be mostly on your own when it comes to dealing with the country you have chosen to adopt from as there are no agencies here who will match you with a child once approved.