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Update: Ethiopia Adoption Program
Dear Families,
This has been a crazy several weeks. As you know we traveled to Ethiopia during January, and then Aster Hiruye came on board as a new Case Manager here in the North Carolina office. You can’t imagine the training she is going through, and yet she is so patient, humble, and willing to learn. Case management is not an easy job to learn - even veteran Case Managers will tell you they are still learning EVERY DAY! Aster has stepped up to the challenge, and I am so glad to have her on board. Her perspective is priceless, and she’s fun to be around. What a blessed addition to our team she is.
Many of you already know that Tracy Froidcoeur is no longer carrying a family case load. In order to make things run more smoothly, she turned her active family cases over to Sue Kramer, Michelle Gardner and Aster Hiruye. If this is news to you, it means Tracy is still handling your case! We have already contacted all the families concerned. Tracy will miss working with each one of these families, but will be watching from behind the scenes, and also praying for each one of them.
Court hearings have slowed down in Addis due, the time it is taking to get laboratory test results back. We are not petitioning for a court date until these second test results come back, so the process has slowed. If a case is given a court date and a referral comes back with results that preclude a parent from adopting a particular child, the dossier is no longer usable for another referral. From that point, it will have to be redone. We know the wait is hard, but we want to do the best for you and your referral.
Consulate appointments should be coming within the next week or so for the last families with approved court cases. However, we do not have new consulate dates as of right now.
The Ministry of Women’s Affairs is also experiencing heavy volumes of adoption cases from all over the world. Ethiopian adoptions have nearly overwhelmed the system, and they too are trying hard to keep up with the large number of adoption cases. This is another reason for the slow down in court dates.
As of last week, we have stopped offering escort service from Ethiopia. We will escort children for families who have already requested it, but will not offer it to new families. The process takes a long time stateside, and children are required to stay for an additional lengthy period of time in the Addis home after court. Additionally, new children can’t be brought in, if children aren’t moving out fast enough.
Earlier this week we posted the following message on our home page:
We are truly blessed by the overwhelming response to our Ethiopian program—more than
we ever imagined. Currently we have a waiting list for families interested in adopting children age 0-4. This list is moving, and hopefully the wait will not be too long.
If you are interested in being added to this list, please contact Carol Nelson.
We will continue to accept applications for children ages 5 and
older, many of which are part of sibling groups.
Due to the time it is taking to move cases through court and the number of children/families waiting for referrals, we must stop registrations for a short time while actions can catch up with numbers. As soon as this happens, we will start working off the waiting list, and will accept registrations for infants and toddlers again. This does not affect currently registered families.
Tracy is in the process of purchasing a large number of easy-to-use HIV kits, to be used by the clinics in the areas where your children come from. These are high quality, reliable tests, and we are very excited about being able to use them for the children, biological families (if necessary) and the orphanage staff.
The purchase of HIV testing equipment for children less than 18 months is on hold for more research. We want to make sure we understand the usability and reliability before making a major purchase. PLEASE PRAY ABOUT THIS.
We are also in the process of purchasing mosquito nets to help protect orphanage staff and children from malaria. This is another exciting project.
The Ethiopia program is doing wel,l and there are exciting things on the horizon. We as a team are blessed to work with this country, and the sweet people who call Ethiopia home.
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