| Adoption Process in Victoria |
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| Firstly, all adoptions in Australia have to go through the relevant State government. This is to ensure that no "baby selling" goes on and that the best interests of the child are kept in mind at all times. In Victoria, intercountry adoption is handled by the Department of Human Services (DHS), of which the Intercountry Adoption Service (ICAS) is a subsection. The process to adopt a child is quite lengthy. Briefly, these are the steps we have to go through: *Attend an information session (Done: Aug 06). *Lodge a registration of interest form (Sep 06). ICAS then sends application papers to us (Oct 06). *Complete the application papers, which include: person details, medical checks, police checks, financial statements, and a signed agreement not to get pregnant within 15 months of adopting the child. (Done: Dec 06) *Attend education classes. These run for 3 days and ensure we have thought through the process and the issues involved before starting the "intensive" part of the process. (Done: May 07) May diary entry *Complete life stories, family trees, and a project on the country we are adopting from. This project helps us learn about the country and can also be used to tell our child about the country they were born in. May diary entry (Done: June 07) *Social worker interviews (minimum of 4). In depth questions about our relationships, parenting, how we will handle cultural issues, etc. (Done: August 07) August diary entry *Acceptance (or refusal) of our application by ICAS. (Done: November 07) Nov diary entry *Complete further documentation as required by the country we are adopting from. (Done: December 07) Dec diary entry *These documents together with the social worker's report are sent to the country. (The process so far took approx 17 months; we finished in Jan 08) July diary entry *Wait. *Wait more. *Keep waiting.... *Finally we will receive an allocation of a child (approx 15 months later; this varies greatly from country to country, and is only this short in our case because we're adopting a special needs child; it's usually more like 3 years+). We say yes! *About 6 weeks later (varies greatly from country to country), fly to country to collect our child and finalise legal documents. *We arrive back in Australia with our new family member who is now legally our child and already has Australian citizenship (this may be different if we'd adopted from another country). Total time taken: approx 3+ years. *Social worker visits 3-4 times over the next 12 months and we write regular reports over this time. These reports are sent to ICAS and the country we adopted from. |
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| How much does it cost? There are several different components: *Fee to ICAS: A$6,553 *Dept of Immigration: A$1,340 *Flights to China: $? *Fee to China for adoption: US$4,500 (approx) *Fee to China for travel & accom: US$2,500 per person (approx) |
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