Showing posts with label Special Needs Adoptions. Show all posts

Tuesday, January 17, 2017

State Department Assailed for New Rules on Foreign Adoptions

NEW YORK (AP) — The State Department, which oversees the adoption of foreign children by American families, is under fire from scores of adoption agencies for drafting new regulations that critics depict as overly rigid and potentially budget-busting.

More than 80 agencies have co-signed a letter to the department, urging the regulations to be withdrawn. The agencies say more than 27,000 people have signed a petition supporting the request.

“We have seen the number of intercountry adoptions decline by 75 percent since 2004,” the agencies’ letter says. “The proposed rules would further restrict adoptions, leaving hundreds of thousands of children who may otherwise be adopted with no hope for a family.”

Among other complaints, the agencies say the proposed regulations would require an extra level of accreditation in order to operate in certain countries, further boosting costs for adoptive families. They also say the rules are overly rigid in regard to required training for adoptive parents, and in regard to fees charged to these parents for services provided in the country they’re adopting from.

The State Department acknowledged that it has received negative feedback about the regulations, as well as some positive input, and declined to offer specific responses at this stage.

In light of the comments, the department said it is working on a supplemental notice seeking to clarify the purpose of the new regulations, and how they would work in practice. Further public comment will be accepted during this process.

The dispute marks a low point in a long-running debate in the U.S. over the dramatic decline in the number of international adoptions. The State Department’s latest report, for the 2015 fiscal year, tallied 5,648 adoptions from abroad, about 75 percent below the high of 22,884 in 2004. The number has fallen every year since then.

The State Department says factors out of its control are responsible for most of the decline — including an increase in domestic adoptions in China, Russia’s suspension of adoptions by Americans, and corruption scandals that shut down international adoptions in several countries.

Susan Jacobs, the department’s special adviser for children’s issues, said she and her colleagues had been working hard to reopen the adoption systems in some of those countries, and expressed optimism about progress in Guatemala, Vietnam and Kyrgyzstan, among others

“I’m very proud of the record we have,” she said.

There’s a contrasting view at the National Council for Adoption, which represents many of the agencies upset by the proposed regulations.

Chuck Johnson, the council’s CEO, described the department’s adoption policies as “disastrous” and says there has been an explicit effort to make international adoptions more difficult.

“I don’t see any way of fixing intercountry adoption unless we have a complete shake-up in staff and policy,” Johnson said in an email.

Johnson said it was possible that under the incoming administration of President-elect Donald Trump, the State Department might adopt policies more to the liking of the adoption agencies. But he expressed frustration at the possibility that the proposed regulations, first made public last September, would be in place before a new secretary of state could reconsider them.

http://wwlp.com/2017/01/09/state-department-assailed-for-new-rules-on-foreign-adoptions/

Thursday, August 20, 2015

Armenian Adoption Adventure- Adoption of Special Needs Armenian Children $35,000 price tag

Another adoption, another ultra religious couple willing to save a child with many needs. This Savannah fat house wife, advertised her fund raising. Not only did she raise the money, but she mentions that Armenia is one of the most expensive (does she think the country sets the price) not only that she hasn't obeyed the terms of her contract by keeping information about her adoption, the country, and agency "quiet" - so much for transparency.
The money......

Rest assured the family may know something about raising a special needs child, since Ms. Orta teaches Special Education. This Family has already traveled to Armenia (Gyumri) to register "Evan" (his fake name) in mid July, they will probably get a court date to travel back begining of November 2015. Meanwhile this Orta family is busy raising funds for the adoption and travel expenses.

Here is where Orka the whale meets "Evan"

Notice how she hides his face AFTER she has plastered his photo

not only online but in the Savannah Newspaper.

Photo of "Evan" (fake name) on Orka the whale's website

Robin sure finds these fat ass evangelicals that want to save the world.

IS ARMENIA EUROPE? No Robin it's not its Caucaus area of Asia Minor

mother's calling: Savannah family nears end of journey to adopt special-needs child

Posted: May 9, 2015 - 10:49pm | Updated: May 10, 2015 - 7:54am

Back | Next

Ian Maule/Savannah Morning News

Christie Orta helps her daughter, Laura, 8, fill up a tablespoon with water while her husband, Raymundo, prepares dinner at their home in Pooler on Thursday. The Ortas are in the process of adopting an Armenian boy to add to their family.

By Katie Martin

The first time Christie Orta saw a picture of Evan, a little boy with big brown eyes and dark hair, she sensed an instant connection.
“The moment I saw that sweet picture — in that moment, I knew,” she said of finding Evan on Reece’s Rainbow, an adoption advocacy website.
Since 2013, Christie and her husband, Raymundo, have been on a mission to adopt 3-year-old Evan, an. Armenian boy with Down syndrome, and although the journey has been a long and often stressful one, Christie said she believes it’s her calling
“I truly believe that’s who God put in our path, and if it takes us a little bit longer and we have to work a little bit harder to raise the funds, then that’s what we need to do,” she said.
Christie, who’s a special education teacher, was inspired to adopt a special-needs child after teaching students who were adopted under similar circumstances. The Ortas tried to foster to adopt within the United States through the Department of Family and Children’s Services, but after their plan fell through, Christie began online research and found Reece’s Rainbow.
The organization began in Atlanta in 2004 as an outreach program for families with babies with Down syndrome. In 2006, the program expanded to promote international adoption of children with Down syndrome.
“Reece’s Rainbow is an amazing advocacy resource for children, adoptive families, potential adoptive families and those who have hearts for children and want to help out,” she said of the program, which offers various grants and programs for people to make donations.
A lot of those donations, Christie said, come from families like hers that are in the process of adopting a child.
“That is one of the beautiful things about Reece’s Rainbow. Even though a lot of the families are in the process of adoption and are working hard to fundraise for themselves, they still donate and cheer on the adoption of others.”
Through fundraisers, raffles, parties and grants the Ortas have raised $21,000 of the $35,000 they need to bring Evan home: $16,000 from fundraisers and $5,000 from a Show Hope grant, a nonprofit organization founded by singer Steven Curtis Chapman.

The process of faith
Armenia’s adoption process is one of the most expensive and longest programs available, and the total cost is more than Christie makes in a year. (and more than Armenians make in a lifetime)
“I was concerned about the money and how we were going to do it... Christie was so excited and I was more realistic,” Raymundo said.
“... At first I wasn’t going for it, but she was very passionate about it, so after we talked I knew that’s what she was meant to do. ... But for Christie, from the very first time she saw the picture she was attached.”
Through the ups and downs of fundraising and the adoption process, faith has played a major role for the family.
“Faith is a huge part of it. If this is something God has put into our path, then he’ll lead us to make it happen,” she said. “He was like this shining star of a baby, and I couldn’t figure out why someone hadn’t committed to him, so I was in a rush to get him. And we’ve met some families through Facebook who had actually pulled (Evan’s) file before committing to other children, so now I know that he was meant for us.”
Christie said it’s easy to romanticize what they’re doing, but, in reality, since Evan isn’t walking, he will need complete care much like an infant. But that’s an adjustment that she, Raymundo and their biological daughter, Laura, 8, are prepared for.
Laura admits she’s a little worried about getting a brother, but she’s more than ready to take on the role of big sister. She hopes to be able to help teach Evan to walk, talk and has already called the top bunk on the bunk beds she hopes to get once he arrives.
She’s got big plans for the rest of the bedroom, too, which she hopes to paint baby blue and fill with lots of boy stuff, like dinosaurs.
“I’ve never had a baby brother before, and now I can play with him... And I want to teach him to be like us two,” Laura said, grinning at her dad.
“We don’t like cheese, peanut butter or blue cheese... And I’m not changing any diapers — (mom and dad) can do that.”
Laura’s anxiety and excitement are mutual feelings in the Orta household as they wait for an email to let them know Evan is ready to meet them. Their first visit to Armenia, which they hope to take in June, will last a week and they plan to make the trip as a family.
After they return home, it will take four to six months to finalize the process and then the Ortas will bring their new son home after a monthlong trip back to Armenia. Christie hopes the new family of four will be together and settled in by Christmas, which, to her, would be the best present of all.
“I’ve already bought him a stocking at the day after Christmas sale. ... It’ll be a new normal once we get him home,” she said.
“We’re just anxious to have him home.”

HOW TO HELP
A tax deductible donation to the Ortas can be made online at reecesrainbow.org/76395/sponsororta. Donations can also be made to the Christie Orta Adoption Fund at any Wells Fargo Bank branch.

ON THE WEB
To follow the Ortas’ adoption journey, go to their blog at evan4theortas.weebly.com

This Holtsville, NY - Sag Harbor resident continues

to troll my websites. He still feels he owes the person who purchased his daughter from

a poor woman in Armenia, in the days of open adoptions- where if he had any connections could have

negotiated his own adoption. Even after Robin's firing from Carolina Adoption Services he remains a

loyal minion to the false savior of children. Reduced to saving overpriced severely disabled children of Armenia

and of those other obscure countries where Robin's nonsense flies under the radar. He is a short midget lawyer who plays

in a rock band and praises Robin for adoption of muslims kids from Morocco to fake christian clients via Kefala ceremony. What this manipulated midget doesn't understand is the damage one time BFF Jeannie Sobie has done and Bennet Kelley Yes a few remaining loyalists pseudo Armenians remain, but the old Yahoo group .......keeps it's distance after your true colors came out - Hope the reunion was a success.

As international adoptions drop to under 5,000 a year to the USA from a high of 22,000 (2005) what obscure country is next ?

Sunday, June 21, 2015

Adoption of Armenian children severely disabled by Americans

This little down syndrome boy also has leukemia and was purchased
by a couple in Virginia from an orphanage in Armenia. I am told he is not Armenian
but rather Russian. Sometimes Armenians will say that about the kids with blond hair or who are Special Needs.

From the "Saviors" video quoting scripture " I will bring your children from the East and
gather you from the West" WTF? Are they fucking retarded? This Down Syndrome kid they
purchased will have more brains then them. They even naively on their blog stated "The adoption agency we used
forbids us to name the country and agency it 's against their policy" Isnt there something strange about a business
that lacks transparency? That scripture is stupid.

This family has no children of their own, they are from Virginia. (name is protected even though Robin has broadcasted their name from the internet as getting a "baby boy" from Armenia.

Why they would a childless couple chose a Down Syndrome baby via our friendly "adoption agency" based out of North Carolina. (you know the one that was fired from Carolina Adoption Services). There was no bargain on this poor child, this couple still paid $31,000 - sold on Armenian Adoption and "saving a child"

It seems this couple is ultra religious and is boasting about saving a "child" when they could have saved a Down Syndrome baby from the American Foster Care System for less than $5,000. Gotta love those Armenians selling a damaged bill of goods to odars.

This case is extra sad, 3/4 of the way into this adoption and one month before they were to travel. It seems our handy dandy trusted adoption agency from North Carolina informed them not only does the boy have Down Syndrome but now has leukemia and is getting chemotherapy treatment. It's very difficult to believe give the track record of the "Agency" and how sick children have been pawned off on paying customers that there was no information prior to the couple obligating themselves financially and emotionally. Alas, its one step away from another tragedy and a dead adopted child.

Regardless, the reputation management team of Kelley and his "partner" will still get money from Robin to work miracles on her online reputation and image. Kelley will spin this into another "saving the children" story and gloss over the fraud part selling damaged goods. One thing Kelley cannot change is foreign law, and it's decision to halt adoptions unless they are very sick children. In Fact, Bennet Kelley ruined Robin Sizemore's reputation and business in Armenia with his constant harassment of Armenians (calling us "Mafia") and his fake vexatous litigation and filings with Santa Monica City Attorney and Police Department who have instructed Bennet Kelley to "take a hike" or he will be prosecuted. Armenia business doesn't concern Bennet Kelley and frankly nothing in California is Bennet Kelley's business.
Freedom of Speech continues, and the truth will always be discussed and transparent not hidden.

From the "Saviors" video
yet these same people haven't lifted a finger to help
American children disabled trapped in the foster care system. why?

Anouncement from the adoptive parents on their blog about finding out that the boy from Armenia they were obligated to ~~purchase~~ adopt was not only Down Syndrome but was diagnosed with Leukemia. Liability wise, Robin should be better advised by her "attorneys" (the one in Long Island is more capable) that health issues and withholding of information (if a family can prove it) would be a nice big juicy lawsuit against her operation. This young couple will be spending thousands of dollars in medical and hospital care, this is negligence and unethical.

Sunday, February 15, 2015

Armenian Adoption Adventure, Armenian Fund puts life into Gyumri Orphanage for special needs

What’s more, the developed world has gotten much more sophisticated about spotting and interrupting the pattern of rapidly increasing adoptions from one country, which has often signaled growing fraud and corruption. In fact, these documents suggest that the U.S. Embassy in Addis Ababa was far more aggressive than had been the case even in Vietnam about trying to prevent another adoption disaster like the ones suffered through elsewhere.

PHASE I: HUMANITARIAN ADOPTIONS

Melissa Fay Greene was correct: When she was there, international adoption from Ethiopia was a welcomed humanitarian venture for the desperately needy few. As she wrote, “It is the first recourse of everyone ethically involved with intercountry adoption to place orphans with relatives, with friends or with families within their home countries; no one imagines or pretends that adoption is a solution to a generation of children orphaned by disease. It is one very small and modest option, a case of families in industrialized nations throwing lifelines to individual children even as their governments fail to commit the money to turn back the epidemic” of AIDS, in the case of Ethiopia.

During these first years of the program, the U.S. Embassy in Addis Ababa sent cables back to the Department of State in D.C. explaining—praising, really—how carefully Ethiopian authorities were overseeing the effort. The country might have been a repressive totalitarian state, but in this, at least, it was admirable: As of 2003, it had licensed only three adoption agencies, two of them American, all of which were “expert at managing the Ethiopian adoption process.”

As is true in most traditional cultures, the Embassy noted that, in the countryside, children were rarely abandoned. There were two exceptions. First, children orphaned by AIDS were, at that time, stigmatized by their families and communities; and second, families that migrated to Addis Ababa for work could, once there, become separated from their children, who were left homeless. A government ministry took guardianship, checked on whether they were truly orphaned or abandoned, and identified the few who needed foreign families.

An Embassy researcher talked with someone in the Wolayta Zone Administrator’s office who reported allegations that local orphanages were bribing families to relinquish their children, saying, "Parents were given empty promises and did not know where their kids were going."

In August 2003, “the process of identifying orphans, approving adoptions, and processing immigrant visas for them is extremely rigorous here,” the U.S. Embassy wrote home to the Secretary of State’s office, in part because the Ethiopian government knew that “trafficking in children is a big business.” Yet even in that same cable, written less than a year after Greene’s New York TimesMagazine article appeared, the Embassy noted that some unscrupulous individuals were going into villages to “collect children” by persuading parents to give them up.I

By 2006, the Embassy was cabling home that “Ethiopia is the fastest growing source country for adoptions by American citizens, and the rapid growth mimics the troubling pattern of programs that were eventually closed because of fraud concerns.” By rapid growth, the Embassy meant that while there had been 105 adoptions in 2000 and 165 in 2003, there had been 284 in 2004 and 442 in 2005—and the curve was about to go up much more steeply.

At the same time, the world—led by the U.S.—was finally offering help for countries devastated by the AIDS pandemic. George W. Bush’s 2003 life-saving PEPFAR (President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief) began helping AIDS-stricken nations like Ethiopia in ways that included distributing anti-retrovirals, sponsoring education campaigns designed to reduce HIV transmission, helping grandmothers and family members care for AIDS orphans by offering micro-grants to feed children and pay school fees, and much more. Over time, it would turn out, this is what would most help Africa’s AIDS orphans: preventing them from being orphaned at all.II

But what did most Americans know about children in Ethiopia, beyond what they read in articles like Greene’s or heard from adoption agencies? Very little. Westerners continued to believe that needy Ethiopian orphans were filling the streets and abandoned infants were being found wrapped in palm leaves—and so they kept applying to adopt. In July 2005, Angelina Jolie adopted an Ethiopian baby, spurring vastly more interest. In March 2006, the U.S. Embassy reported so much dramatic growth that it asked for more staff to handle the flood of orphan visa applications. It worried a little about the Ethiopian government’s ability to keep up with the demand, while acknowledging that Ethiopian officials “appear determined to maintain legitimacy in Ethiopian adoption” and “insist on proper documentation before a child is released to a non-Ethiopian family.”

But a February 2007 cable noted that the number of applications to adopt from Ethiopia—and the number of American adoption agencies working in the country—were expanding “exponentially,” with eight times as many agencies working in country than had been there in 2000, for a total of 24. Contributing to that explosive growth was the fact that China was offering far fewer children for adoption, and Guatemalan adoptions were about to be closed to Americans because of systemic fraud and corruption. In other words, demand was being funneled toward Africa. Which is why the U.S. Embassy in Addis Ababa wrote, very diplomatically, “One agency recently was found to be working with an American facilitator who had previously presented problematic adoption cases,” although that agency dropped contact with the problematic facilitator. Still, there were too many agencies, too many children coming and going, too many people opportunistically looking in the countryside for “adoptable” children.III

PHASE II: THE GOLD RUSH

At last came the crisis that the Embassy officials had feared. By July 2008, the Embassy wrote, more than 70 licensed agencies were referring Ethiopian children for adoption, 24 of them American. There had been only three licensed agencies in 2000. The system was officially overwhelmed. Ethiopian officials wanted to bring adoption to a complete halt to clean things up—which would have stranded both those children who truly did need new homes, and would leave prospective adoptive parents heartbroken and frustrated, clutching pictures of their promised children but unable to bring them home.