To want to adopt a child from Haitai?

[booyou]

Well....just that really. We have discussed adopting a child in the future and there are up to 1 million oprhans or one parent has died.... would like to help....

booyou I think its a natural human reaction to want to "rescue" a child in such horrendous circumstances.

However, you would be better of sponsoring a child in Haiti so that a family there has financial support to look after them.

This was my argument with the whole Madonna thing. If you want to "help" a child from a purely selfless position, keep them in their culture but enable a family to look after them. By bringing them over here are you not, in some part, fulfilling your own needs to nurture (and rescue) and therefore being selfish? Also you are assuming that a life in a richer country is a better life than one in a poor country.

Do you honestly believe that the UK is a better, happier, less stressful place for a child to be in the long term? Can you guarantee a child a better quality life at e.g. 12yrs old here than they could be having in a haitian family in a partially rebuilt Haiti?

Inter country adoption is very complex and complicated.

On a practical level, even if the authorities in Haiti wanted children to be adopted overseas (why would they want to lose a generation from a country that has lost so much?), you would need to be an approved adopter before enquiring and, depending where you live, to get approved can take 18months or even up to 2yrs.

There are many orphans in Haiti, there are also many parents who have lost children. Maybe one day these bereaved parents may feel able to adopt a haitian child.

Haiti needs support to find its own solutions.

YANBU to think like that. It is human nature to feel desperate to help. The news article was heartbreaking. It would take a heart of stone to not want to scoop up one of those little children shown there and show them love and hope, and make them safe.

Obviously in real life it isn't that simple, and it isn't always the right thing to happen either.

But no one is unreasonable to want to just make those babies and children's feel safe and loved again.

An understandable response, even if not really very practical.

I was in tears earlier seeing video of one little girl rescued. She was about 2 and no-one knew who she was, or even her name - so they called her Lena. The mum of the child in the next bed was doing her best to tend for and comfort the poor child. We can only hope that when the dust settles that some relatives will be identified for these poor children.

FFS the country is in chaos, lots of these children have family who will be looking for them but cannot find them yet. The last thing this country needs is these children being taken to a foregn country before the situation is under control and people have had a chance to be reunited.

The American's have already taken 57 children to be adopted. It's insanity. What Haiti needs is help to recover and help to reunite families, not a rush to grab a child!

PS, OP I understand you want to help. But it's misguided to think adopting a child right now from a country in ruin would be in the child's best long term interests IMO.

From what I understand the children being adopted by Americans had already been well into the adoption process and the relevant US governmental agencies just speeded up the final approvals. They are not just being whisked off to live in the States and as someone mentioned earlier many have been adopted by people of Haitian descent.

it hasn't even been determined whose parents are actually dead . . .

my folks know two couples in the US who have adopted Haitian children, but they had Haitian parents themselves.

I cried when I saw that little girl Lionstar.

YANBU to have the natural instinct to want to help and protect these children but as others have said, it might not be in their long term best interests to remove them from what they know.

Many of the orphaned children will have extended family who will love and care for them in their own environment and I think this is the path to go down.

I cant believe that they are shipping children to the US already. Surely, they havent even had enough time to find their families and find out what they would like to happen.

'I cant believe that they are shipping children to the US already. Surely, they havent even had enough time to find their families and find out what they would like to happen. '

They were already known orphans in orphanages waiting for paperwork to go through.

They sped up the paperwork and got them out of the country.

"When you see any child who has lost their family on the news, your natural instinct is to want to go and pick them up and cherish them," it said. "Sometimes international adoption is the right solution for a child, but far more often it is not."

thanks Bicnod.
You have spurred me on to sponser a child through Action Aid.
I have just done it after thinking about it but never getting round to actually do it.

Sorry expat, didnt realise that.

The 26 children who have already been evacuated to the US to eb adopted were already part way through the adoption process. they already had families waiting to adopt them, families matched to them. They are not just children being sent over to the US in the hope of being adopted. The children are being allowed to their adoptive families now and the paperwork being completed once there, normally it would be done beforehand.

Just been watching BBC and seen one such child managing to leave Haiti with her adoptive father. The little girl being adopted, and her new father, had to leave her little friend behind. Was heartbreaking. The father did say he was going to try and see if he could adopt her too, that she'd been in the home for 4 years already.

As many have said an understandable reponse.

But adopting a child is not easy. Adopting a traumatised child is even less easy. Adopting a traumatised child who doesn't speak your language or understand your culture even less easy again. And (you've got there before me haven't you!) adopting a traumatised child who doesn't speak your language or understand your culture and will always look different to the rest of their family even less easy than that.

Really not something to be done on the spur of the moment.

As several people have said the best place for these children is firstly with their birth family (extended if no parents), with a loving family within their own culture/country second, only then should an intercountry adoption be considered when all other avenues have been explored thsts what the Hague conventionsays and it seems pretty spot on to me.

When the dust has settled (excuse the phrase) no doubt the level of intercountry adoption in the medium term will pick up for a while but it's unlikely to be from the Uk due to the cost/time and general apathy surrounding intecountry adoption.

There have been less than 10 applications to adopt from Haiti since 2002 and that would include families living here adopting blood relatives in Haiti. So not impossible but very very hard work.

Why don't you consider sponsoring a child, siblings or even a family. They desperately need help with school fees, books, shoes, dentistry, glasses and medical fees all things we take for granted in the UK. I think you get regular updates and you can send special gifts as well as money. Can you speak French? I think that is their first language.

but YANBU - any mother would want to try to help.

And those of you who advocate adopting from the UK instead - have you tried?

I mean seriously?

I was too old, too single and too middle-class for any child that might have some chance of making a permanent home with me. Only children I would be considered for were children with serious problmes - because thats the sensible thing to do of course match th emost damaged childrne with the least experienced and least "perfect" parents .

I think you ALWAYS need to adopt because you want another child and for no other reason. Any child adopted for charitable purposes (no matter how well intentioned) faces a sad reality. If you are not determined to have a child, you will never get through the toruous British process.

worldfamouskewcumber No, I've not yet tried. If and when I do, I'd want a child, not a "perfect product". I know you're not actually meaning "oh god no, I couldn't possibly take a broken one" but it did sound a bit like that. :-/

I do very much agree with your other sentiments though.

I have one already skihorse (ie the broken one). We adopters, I think, are perhaps more blunt as we have been faced with the unpalatble reality of having to decide which child we could cope with and stand a chance of "sticking" and which would be more than we could deal with; but apologies if it sounded offensive.

Not in any childs interest to have a disrupted adoption. Though of course you can't always (as with a birth child) predict what issues they might have.

Any chance of you posting your montage up again KEW?

That might give some of the folk on this thread a little insight... esp Skihorse and her "I wouldnt want a broken one" comment

Its truely inspirational.

I understand all the issues, but I also want to swoop in and rescue a bunch of babies and look after them and cuddle them and make sure they get a lot of eat and love etc. Nothing wrong with that impulse at all. It can just be channelled more effectively than actually going and rescuing one child.

Yes YABU. It's a bad idea. It times of catastrophe when these children have undergone such trauma and upheaval the last thing they should have to face is being uprooted to live in a foreign country with strangers who don't speak their language and live their lives very differently to what they have known.

In Sri Lanka following the tsunami there was a huge number of applications for adoption. It was decided though that none of the orphans will be allowed to be adopted out of the country and as much as possible found homes within their own extended families or community. Completely the right decision. It was reported at the time that some foreigners had expressed an interest due to the very unfortunate idea that adopting a tsunami orphan was like owning a piece of history .

g'wan geordieminx - twist my arm

My DS is truly divine and we are in a honeymoon period at present where he has few issues to do with his adoption or race (mainly to not really understanding yet!), but when I met him he was a very tiny 11 month old in 3-6 month clothes, unable to sit unaided, born at 26 weeks and less than a kilo. The medical assessment was that he had about a 20% chance of mild to moderate cerebral palsy and high risk of learning difficulties, the other children had similar prematurity issues along with significant lung problems, or had failed to thrive and their weight/size had started normal and plummeted down off the charts or had an eye problem which could have been a lazy eye or could have been brain damage.

Every child apart from one (of six) being adopted at the same time as DS had a health issue that a UK GP would have considered potentially serious. And the majority had institutional delays. The reality of adopting overseas is neither cool not glamorous (as someone said).

It is however, like most parenting, more like a roller coaster than a train - wild highs and lows but a hell of a ride

my lovely boy

Oh god, I'm off to get a hanky before I click.

It is the most amazing thing I have ever seen - and the most memorable part of MN for me.

There have been a lot of sad occasions on MN, but there is nothing that touches me like this

I got to 12 seconds in before the tears started

Re child sponsorship, actually the latest research shows that it's more beneficial to sponsor a village/ community (same level of donation is okay, though obviously giving more money is even better! ). What can happen when an individual is sponsored is that it creates inequality, unrest and jealousy among those who have not been so lucky as to have a Western sponsor. That then causes problems for the adopted child and their family.

Re adoption within the UK, I wholeheartedly agree with whoever said this is a huge concern. There are loads of children here who are desperate for a family, and many of whom will sadly never have one because they happen to be older than a baby. Like booyou, my DH and I plan to adopt in the future, but we're pretty much committed to adopting an older UK child rather than seeking to adopt abroad. We will then continue to support projects, etc in developing countries.

We once visited a children's home in Uganda where I fell in love with one particular girl. When I came home I toyed with the idea of seeking to adopt her, but realised that at that particular home (full of love and very personal care from foster parents within the home) the children were so beautifully cared for that there was nothing I could offer her apart from material wealth. And I can do that easily by sending money. And to bring her to our heavily commercialised culture would cause her a huge amount of stress.

I think it's wonderful to have such a strong desire to help people who are in dire straits, so OP your intentions are very admirable. However, if you imagine a child from the UK whose family have all died, being adopted by, say, a wealthy Mozambiquan family and taken there to grow up, perhaps you can see more easily that international adoption carries avoidable complexities for children who are already very vulnerable (as well as for their families).

There is a multitude of more beneficial ways in which you can redirect your very honourable care and concern towards these children.