[mommylou]

We are intrested in doing a sp. needs adoption from Haiti..I read that it could be done indy? We are trying to keep costs down
Does anyone know the timeframe and expense involved?
We need to do this as economically as possible.
TIA!!
Kat,
Mommy to an awesome 3 yr old amputee!!

[kayder1996]

When adopting from Haiti you can adopt independently or use an agency. There are many orphanages/facilitators that help to match you with a child/children and then walk you through the steps to adopt them. You would need a current home study to do this. Depending on the orphanage/facilitator, you either use their attorney or you hire your own. You also must fill out all of your immigration paperwork on your own. Usually the attorney hired takes care of the Haitian paperwork and you receive updates as to how your file is progressing. If you use an agency, it's the same thing but the agency is responsible for finding the orphanage/facilitator, hiring an attorney, doing some of the immigration work for you. Of course, with an agency, there is a little bit more security because if you change your mind about the country for some reason or if the country shuts down adoptions, you could switch to another country that the agency does adoptions from. But independent adoptions are cheaper and may not require that much more effort than an agency based one. There are many people who are doing/have done the independent route. The time frame with Haitian adoptions is hard to say. It is truly a country where things can change quickly and where comparing your adoption to someone else's makes little sense. People may take five days to get through one step and others may take five months. I would say 15-18 months once your dossier arrives in Haiti is probably fairly accurate. Currently, the last 2 stages of the Haitian side are going through large scale delays and have been for many months now. However, that may change and those delays may disappear, drastically changing the wait time. But you never know.

As far as special needs children go, you would need to define special needs. Most people mean children with physical or mental disabilities but if you are talking about state run grant programs, the age of the child often makes them special needs. Children who can be adopted in Haiti are placed at orphanages anywhere between the ages of birth to teenagers. And as with any country, there are obviously children who have some type of physical or mental disability; it would just be a matter of being matched with such a child by telling your facilitator/agency what you would consider. Brittney's Hope is an agency based website the offers grants for special needs children all over the world so if you haven't looked at that site, I would recommend it. I do not know of any specific organization/website that deals only with special needs Haitian children.

Hope that helps.