Some fear proposed rules will gut number of foreign adoptions

Adoptions in U.S. have plummeted because of costs, corruption and restrictions in countries such as Russia.

By the time Westerville attorney Douglas Althauser turned 36 he had travelled, published a book and received a couple of college degrees — experiences that provided a certain meaning to his life.

Then a social worker placed a five-month-old Cambodian son named Michael in his arms and said, “Here you go, Dad.”

“I can’t think of a single thing that was important to my life prior to becoming a father,” Althauser said of that moment 19 years ago. “All those things went on the back burner.”

Michael was one of more than 15,000 children adopted internationally in 1998, and many of the receiving parents were smitten much as Althauser was. But as of 2015, the number of adoptions had dwindled to 5,647 as policy changes, corruption and stricter regulations in countries such as Russia plunged the total to its lowest level in more than 30 years.

Now, international adoption agencies worry that a sweeping set of proposed State Department regulations may erode the number further.

“This would have the effect of strangling international adoption,” said Thomas Taneff, a Columbus adoption attorney.

Advocates say the proposed rules are a much-needed attempt to better protect children and families from being set up to fail. One of the proposals would effectively prevent agencies from charging prospective adoptive parents for the cost of caring for their child before the child is brought to the United States. Another would require a second level of authorization before allowing adoptions in certain countries.

“If you want take care of kids, more oversight and better conditions for success should trump any business objective,” said April Dinwoodie, chief executive of the Donaldson Adoption Institute, a research and advocacy organization that studies adoption.

But Chuck Johnson of the National Council for Adoption argues that the proposed rules would have a “devastating” effect on international adoption.

“It’s regulation upon regulation, but they really in our opinion did not get to the real root of some of the issues we wanted to get at,” he said.

The proposals are in response to a number of high-profile cases of corruption, fraud and child trafficking. In 2003, a Pennsylvania man was arrested for child sex trafficking involving a Russian girl he’d adopted in 1998. In 2010, a Siberian boy was returned to Russia after his adoptive mother decided she could no longer care for him.

Critics of the proposals, however, argue that such cases are rare, and the steps being proposed will result in more children being left in orphanages in impoverished countries.

“What’s the worst evil?” Taneff asked. “Is it, ‘let’s cure this thing with a sledgehammer so all kids get stuck over there because we want to minimize fraud on less than one percent of cases?”

Taneff, himself the father of an adopted girl from China, said the existing international adoption process is already fraught with bureaucratic hurdles.

“I consider myself an above average smart person, and my wife is too,” he said. “But the amount of red tape that already exists is daunting, and this is simply more red tape, more bureaucracy. Who suffers in the end? The child in that orphanage.”

A State Department official said the changes aim to make a system that has placed more than 200,000 children over the last 15 years a better one.

“The proposed changes seek to strengthen standards for those seeking accreditation or approval to provide inter-country adoption services,” the official said, noting that the changes are not final.

Dinwoodie said a proposal to require more training for parents is aimed at preparing adoptive families for as many potential challenges as possible. And the fee rule, she said, would help protect adoptive parents from financial fraud.

“There should be some kind of clear understanding of what the money goes for, who handles the money and where it goes to,” she said.

Those in opposition say adequate safeguards are already in place. Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, signed onto a congressional letter opposing the regulations, saying pre-adoption training already works to prepare parents for adoption.

”Adding even more costs to this already expensive process and making parents jump through unnecessary hoops could make it impossible for some families to adopt and deprive children of loving homes,” he said.

Margaret Cole, who has handled 8,000 international adoptions through her European Adoption Consultants agency in Strongsville, said she doesn’t oppose the idea of reform. It’s just that these reforms don’t make sense, she said.

“We don’t have the staff to do things that don’t do any good,” she said. “There are babies starving and if we spend the money on a license instead of helping orphans, then what? Why would we do that? We already have licenses.”

Althauser feels grateful that his adoption process was relatively easy, though the paperwork involved made it something of “an endurance test,” he said. His son Michael is now a sophomore in college and studying video game design.

“You just can’t regulate the commitment a parent is willing to have in order to adopt a child,” he said. “Those of us who have worked so hard to be able to adopt a child have really shown a lot of dedication to being great parents.”

Proposed rules

A sweeping set of proposed State Department regulations on foreign adoption have encountered opposition from international adoption agencies and others who fear they will dramatically reduce the number of adoptions to families in the United States. Here are the proposals that are causing the most concern:

  • Agencies would effectively be prevented from charging prospective adoptive parents for the cost of caring for their child in the period between getting matched with a child and taking him or her home. Families say because they are adopting from impoverished countries, they feel obliged to pay for food, clean water and medical care during that time, but advocates of the change say it offers protection against financial fraud.
  • A second level of authorization would be required to adopt from a specific country on top of the existing accreditation process already in place. Adoption agencies say this creates yet another layer of bureaucracy, requiring more staffing and more potential hurdles to adoption.
  • Parents pursuing international adoptions would be required to participate in their state's foster care training. Critics say some states don't offer the level of training required by the new regulations, and that the foster training doesn't provide the specialized training that adopting a child from a foreign country might require.

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