The following was originally posted at Mrs. Broccoli Guy on January 24, 2007 and reposted at VVAI in August 2012
I am loving all the thoughtful comments on my last post! I really appreciate that so many of you took the time to put in your two cents”¦ it’s good to hear other perspectives and insights. And the best part is it gives me more fodder for another post! Seriously, with every new comment I wanted to respond and keep the dialogue going ”¦ I can imagine all of us around a big table sharing dinner somewhere having this great intense discussion. So bear with me as I jump back into the conversation”¦
J said, “So ”“ obvious rule breakers ”“ big problem, shut them down. The more careful, well-connected folks who might be using intimidation/$$/false promises to stock their orphanages. What can be done? I don’t know. That seems an even bigger problem to me ”“ though I think that the paperwork rulebreakers do show through their lack of concern for ethics that might be even more prone to this problem as well.
And I want to say, I totally agree. There’s like two types of bad agency ”“ the kind that has sloppy paperwork and unprofessional employees that either inadvertantly or blatantly break rules and all that”¦ and then there’s the agency that has the system all figured out and does a lot of unethical things behind the scenes to make sure their cases all go through quickly and the referrals are plentiful. Consider this situation that occured in Cambodia eight years ago:
P~’s birth mother in Cambodia was told she would receive financial help from the “rich American family who adopted her daughter. She didn’t just happen to relinquish her daughter to the orphanage. She was approached by an orphanage worker and encouraged, I would say coerced, into falsifying documents to indicate that P~ was an abandoned child. In reality, P~ lived with her mother, stepfather, and siblings right up until the day I took her into my arms.
What can be done? Well, first of all, I think adoptive parents need to be really aware of what is being done on their behalf ”“ especially when they are in the foreign country and might see things for themselves. And then they have to be willing to speak up, even if it might reflect badly on their own adoption. It is because of brave parents like the one quoted above that the FBI was able to make a case and get an indictment against a very powerful woman.
Secondly, I think there’s a whole other side to the corruption issue. We get so focused on wrong doing that we don’t look for right-doing. By that I mean going above and beyond what is expected of an agency to work for the best interests of the children, even if it means having less kids to refer or having to wait longer to make the referral. It seems like the standard expectation is that agencies will do “humanitarian work in the orphanages they are contracted with and will give referrals of the children in their care as quickly as possible, and then process the paperwork in a professional manner. And while that is all good, I don’t think it’s good enough. I mean, of course they are going to donate food and medical care to the orphanages”¦ those kids are their bread and butter and they have to take care of them. I know that sounds really crass, but let’s be honest ”“ every adoption brings in money. When adoptions in Vietnam stopped, all but maybe 3-4 agencies totally pulled out of Vietnam ”¦ there was no money to be made, so they up and left. The same was true in Cambodia. Within those parameters, some facilitators/agencies put all the money back into the orphanages and even started schools for the kids in some cases; others pocketed most of the money and the orphanages were in total disrepair and the kids were sickly. But the more I thought about the issue the more I realized that it’s not enough just to take care of the orphans. Because at some point people in the village see the orphans are better fed and educated than their own kids (not to mention hitting the life lottery and getting a free ticket to the US or Europe) and they decide to take their kid(s) to the orphanage too. It’s not “coercion per se, but it’s really not solving the problem of too many orphans either. That’s when I stumbled onto Holt’s program in Thailand. Here’s a little snippet of what they do:
T~, Th~, and their birth mother were referred to Holt Sahathai’s Nakorn office for nutritional assistance when the twins were 4 months old.
Their parents separated after their birth, and the father wanted to give the twins to his cousin. But wanting to raise the boys herself, the mother moved in with her own mother, hoping to find a job.
Unfortunately, she wasn’t successful at finding consistent work, and because of her limited finances, she wasn’t getting good nutrition herself. With insufficient breast milk, she fed the twins sweetened condensed milk which was cheaper than powdered formula. Thao and Thanom became malnourished and were eventually admitted to the provincial hospital because of diarrhea and malnutrition.
After they were discharged, the hospital referred the twins and their mother to HSF for help. HSF provided powdered formula and taught this young mother about infant nutrition. HSF also counseled her on employment and long-term plans. Thao and Thanom’s health gradually improved, especially with their grandmother’s help.
The twins’ mother then went to Bangkok to work, but unfortunately lost contact with her family. Though their grandmother dearly loved the boys, she feared that she couldn’t care for them properly, and so she asked HSF to place the children in an orphanage temporarily.
Because of the negative effects of institutionalization, the HSF social worker encouraged her to continue caring for the boys until a permanent solution could be found. HSF continued to help meet the babies’ physical needs: nutrition, children’s supplies, and medical care.
HSF also approached the twin’s aunt and uncle who lived nearby to gain their involvement. The grandmother, uncle, and aunt attended various support group activities regularly arranged by HSF. They participated in the Kinship Care Group (meetings, picnic, field trip, and camp), the Powdered Milk Group (group education/discussion), and an annual party for families with twins or triplets.
Now 3 years old, T~ and Th~ enjoy good health and their development is age-appropriate. And best of all, these precious boys now have parents””their aunt and uncle.
Obviously, not every case has a happy ending like the one above”¦ often it turns out there is no birth family who is willing or able to care for the child and there are no local families interested in adopting either, and in those cases international adoption truly is the best option for the child. The problem is that most of the time no one bothers to consider any option other than international adoption, because that’s where the money is. Many agencies will say they are too “small to take on big projects like that”¦ and I would argue that’s why smaller isn’t better when it comes to adoption agencies. Yes, smaller agencies can give the PAP’s personalized care and hand-holding, but I think the work in the foreign country is much more significant than anything the local office is doing.
Rosemary asked, “Did you go with Holt and do you recommend them? Anyone else you recommend or firmly don’t recommend?
Yes, we did go with Holt”¦ once I saw what they were doing in Thailand, I did more investigating and found they have similar programs in every country they work in. After what we saw in Cambodia, we felt very strongly that we had to know without a shadow of a doubt that we were the last best option for our son. There were times I was frustrated with the “bureaucracy of a larger agency, but we always knew things were being handled ethically and professionally and I would recommend them. That said, I’m sure there are other good ethical agencies ”¦ a few leap to mind, but I’m not comfortable naming names on my blog. Nor will I list the ones I would stay far away from ”¦ because first of all I don’t have first-hand knowledge of other agencies, and secondly I’m not in the mood to get sued. But if you really want to know, email me and I’ll respond privately.
Laurie said, “It would be pretty naïve of us to think any adoptions in Vietnam are squeaky clean. How can you play by the rules when there aren’t any rules? ”¦ No agency can act perfectly when the government of the country you’re adopting from is itself responsible for the corruption”¦and there is no uniformity in the process from province to province! ”¦ It seems like agencies are always being bad-mouthed if they get young babies and referral waits are short, but what “unethical actions, specifically, are we accusing them of?? I am all ears if anyone can site some specifics with regards to “unethical behaviors from the agencies we’re alluding to. We always talk so elusively, let’s just be open.
I agree that some officials in Vietnam make it very very hard to play by the rules. And obviously agencies can not be held accountable for corruption that goes on completely on the Vietnamese side that they know nothing about. However, there is quite a bit an agency can do to avoid any appearance of corruption. Little things like refusing to engage in the “favor game that is so popular ”“ things like taking people out for dinner or hosting officials’ family members in their homes in the US. In our case, the provincial offical made excuses and stalled and refused to sign our son’s paperwork even though he had no legal reason to do so. It appeared that he was hoping for favors or bribes or something to give him the incentive to do his job. Our agency flatly refused to pay any “unpublished fees or even take him out for dinner”¦ they just kept going back to the office and offering to help solve any “problem he invented until finally (after 6 months) he relented and signed the paperwork. To me, that was a clear case of corruption on the VN side of things, but it also showed that an agency could do a “squeaky clean adoption and play by the rules. Also, I completely agree that the timelines vary by province”¦ in our agency one province takes two months to process the child’s paperwork and then there was our province that took six months.
What unethical behaviors am I alluding to? Again, I’ll send you back to my 9.27.06 post. Things I’ve heard since VN re-opened? “Bidding for orphanage contracts, or to get the most/best referrals; buying a car for the orphanage director (same goal in mind); paying “unpublished fees to get paperwork through; switching the paperwork on two babies at the last minute for an additional fee. And this is the latest I heard today from a reader who emailed me privately: an agency that gave out around 20 referrals in the last few weeks, having their families scramble and expedite everything to get them in before the Jan 15 cut off. (The date when IAD was to start reviewing all referrals to make certain orphanages are giving out referrals in an equitable and ethical manner). This same agency (which no, sorry, I am not going to name because like I said I don’t want to get sued) has this posted on their website:
Adorable babies are being placed from Vietnam!
WE HAVE WAITING BABIES!
Referrals for paper-ready families can be made immediately.
While there is nothing unethical about the above statement, I think it sounds just a little too much like a Babies R Us advertisement and raises all kinds of red flags for me.
I totally agree Laurie, that we need to be open. Unfortunately, the lawsuit-happy world we live in makes that very difficult. But people can email one another privately and we can publicly post about things that seem concerning or suspicious to us and that’s at least a step in the right direction, I think. I also want to be very clear that I am not saying that anyone who adopted a young baby had an unethical adoption. I am sure many (most probably) of these children truly needed families and their paperwork was completely on the up and up. The problem is the pressure to produce young babies, fast referrals and short timelines invariably leads to unethical things going on.
As “Anonymous said, “I recently had a PAP write to me that she was changing agencies because she could get an immediate referral. The only down side was that the Country fee was $5000 more, but when spending $20,000 what’s another $5000. That’s one way to think about it, but that $5000 is also 50% more than other agency’s country fee. Maybe I’m just digging for reasons for those referrals, but it just seems off to me.
You guys had so many great things to say on the topic of adopting more than one child at a time and Elle brought up another issue that I want to discuss (the thoughts/emotions we attribute to adopted kids) but this is getting crazy long. So I’ll save those for another day.
Please consider this discussion still open ”“ if you have more to say or new thoughts spring to mind, please comment! Like a few of you said, it’s good to hear different and opposing views, and you have proven we can have a “heated discussion without resorting to flames or personal attacks. You are great, my bloggy friends!
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