Lastpaige- I will describe our knowledge of the process at the public adoption center in Warsaw (one of the three you mention, director of this one is Mrs. Podczaska). My wife and I met with its staff in May 06 and we specifically discussed the matching process with them. First of all, it is our understanding that each of the three centers has its own governing body (referral commission), which in the case of the public center meets once a month currently. Each of the three centers gets the children to be matched through a lottery (so each center has 1/3 of all children available for adoption-hence working with agencies that submit your dossier to all three can be an advantage as you have potentially have access to all the children). The last meeting took place on June 13th and the next one should be coming up soon this month. My wife will be calling the center in a few days and we will let everyone know when it happens.
Following the approval as adoptive parents (which also involves a meeting of a commission), your dossier is put into a file and assigned a number, which looks like this xx/2006 (if you were approved this year). We actually know our number and saw our file. You are placed into one of 3 categories: list “A” of parents residing in Poland, list “B” of parents residing abroad who have Polish roots (we are in this category), and then the rest. Each file is assigned a person responsible on your last name’s first letter (the “leading person” or “osoba prowadzaca” in Polish). The commission is composed of lawyers, psychologists, etc. They work hard and told us that they do take into account the interest of the child and also request made by prospective parents as to age, sex, etc. of the child or children. We have heard that in addition to many factors that go into the decision physical resemblance may play some role. This is surely not a rule and we know parents who have adopted minority children from Poland (e.g. Roma) who did not look anything like them.
We were told that although we are on the “B” list, which puts us ahead of many foreigners, it may take a few months or even a year to match us with children. It simply depends on what types of children are available at the time and how many families want to adopt children with similar characteristics. We are fairly flexible, as we requested a child or 2 siblings 0-7 yrs old, any sex. We know a Polish family residing in Germany who waited 3 years for a referral because they requested a child 3-4 years old specifically, which was much too restrictive.
NOTE: We are still not completely sure how agencies/facilitators fit into the above picture. We know that they do have connections with orphanages and the 3 Warsaw adoption centers and seem to be able to influence decisions about referrals. I will not use names, but we are puzzled that one facilitator seems to be placing less healthy, older, larger sibling groups as opposed to another agency which seems to be placing younger, healthier children. I will add that the latter is more expensive.
I hope others will add their experiences and insight. The above is based on our extensive research, meetings with staff at the public adoption center in Warsaw and an orphanage in Poland, numerous communications with parents who have adopted or are in the process of adopting right now.
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Originally Posted by lastpaige
It appears to be that once you’re approved to adopt that the dossier is placed into a pile of ‘approved parents’. Then a governing board meets a few times a year to peruse the pile of approved adoptive parents and the pile of approved adoptive children and match up whomever they can match up. Is this correct? If so then referrals come in waves, say quarterly? How do the three umbrella entities (under whom all the orphanages fall) fit into this?
Thank you!
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