[Colorbind love]

Can someone tell me what the dossier requirements for India is?

We just got word from India that we can adopt a special needs child. They are requesting our homestudy first so that they can get the offical referral with the Indian government. We can start working on the dossier requirements while that is being done but we don't know what India requires--our last dossier was for Sierra Leone, lol.

TIA

[shammi]

My advise to you is to visit the CARA website and see the requirements for the dossier. Another option is for you to contact your adoption agency that is doinig the home study to find out the requirements from them as well. I live in Canada and therefore the requirements here are a bit different from whatever country you live in. Hope this helps you.
Good Luck on your journey!
Shammi

[spaypets]

From CARA's website: http://cara.nic.in/carahome.html

These documents are in addition to the documents you provided your homestudy agency (it was frustrating because we worked with the same agency for both but didn't do the home study and dossier concurrently, so we had to go back for some documents)

(a) Home Study Report of the foreign adoptive parents prepared by a professional worker as per Annexure "A".


(b) Recent photographs of the adoptive family. (NOTE: MY AGENCY SAID THIS HAD TO BE A FULL LENGTH SHOT -- FEET SHOWING)

(c) Marriage certificate of foreign adoptive parents.


(d) Declaration concerning health of adoptive parents. (NOTE: WE HAD A SPECIAL FORM -- THIS WAS IN ADDITION TO THE HEALTH FORM FOR THE HOME STUDY)


(e) Certificate of medical fitness of adoptive parents duly certified by a medical doctor. (NOTE: WE HAD A FORM FOR THIS TOO, I THINK).


(f) Declaration regarding financial status of foreign adoptive parents along with supporting documents including employers certificate, where applicable.


(g) Employment certificate, if applicable of foreign adoptive parents.


(h) Income Tax Assessment order of foreign adoptive parents.


(i) Bank references.


(j) Particulars of the properties owned by the foreign adoptive parents.

(k) Declaration from foreign adoptive parents stating willingness to be appointed guardian of the child.

(l) Undertaking from the social or child welfare enlisted agency sponsoring the foreigner to the effect that child would be legally adopted by the foreign adoptive parents according to the law of the country within a period not exceeding two years from the time of arrival of the child and as soon as the adoption is effected. Social or child welfare enlisted agency will send three certified copies of adoption order each to the social or child welfare agency in India through which the application for guardianship is processed for filing in the Court and one copy to Central Adoption Resources Agency, Ministry of Welfare.



(m) Undertaking from the foreign adoptive parents that adopted child would be provided necessary education and upbringing according to the status of adoptive parents.



(n) Undertaking from the social and child welfare enlisted agency that report relating to progress of the child along with his/her recent photograph would be sent quarterly during first two years and half yearly for the next three years in the prescribed performa through Indian's Diplomatic Missions abroad.



(o) Power of Attorney from foreign adoptive parents in favour of offices of the social or child welfare agency in India which will be required to process the case and such Power of Attorney should authorise the Attorney to handle the cases on behalf of the foreigner in case the foreigner is not in a position to come to India.



(p) Certificate from the enlisted social or child welfare agency sponsoring application of the foreigner to the effect that adoptive parents are permitted to adopt a child according to the law of their country.



(q) Undertaking from the social or child welfare enlisted agency to the effect that in case of disruption of the family of the foreigner before legal adoption has been affected, it will take care of the child and find a suitable alternative placement for the child with the approval of Central Adoption Resource Agency. After seeking the necessary approval from CARA it will report alternative placement to the concerned court handling guardianship proceeding in the foreign country. And such information shall be passed on by the court to the Central Adoption Resource Agency.



(r) Undertaking from the social or child welfare enlisted agency that it will reimburse all expenses to the concerned Indian Social or Child Welfare agency as fixed by competent court towards maintenance of the child and processing charge fees.




Important Instructions



(1) The Home Study Report should broadly include information in regard to the various matters set out in Annexure "A" though it need not strictly adhere to the requirements of the Annexure and it should also contain an assessment by the social or child welfare agency as to whether the foreigner wishing to take a child in adoption is fit and suitable and has the capacity to parent a child coming from a different racial and cultural milieu and whether the child will be able to fit into the environment of the adoptive family and the community in which it lives.



(2) All the above Certificates and declaration documents must accompany the application of the foreigner for taking a child in adoption should be duly notarised by a Notary Public whose signature should be duly attested either by an officer of the Ministry of External Affairs on Justice or Social Welfare of the country of the foreigner or by an officer of the Indian Embassy or High Commissions or Consulate in that country.


GOOD LUCK!

[Colorbind love]

Thank you. I found the info on CASA's sight.

Aside from the marriage certificate, it looks like a great deal of the dossier we'll need to get the information from the agency in order to know how to prepare it. And, am I right that it doesn't appear that we need birth certificates on us? If we don't birth certificates for the dossier, then we just need to order some more marriage certificates and wait for the precise forms from the adoption agency, which were mailed out today.

I get the feeling we need to wait for our packet for instructions for most of the dossier though.

Do we need birth certificates? For some reason, we didn't need any for our homestudy in this state, so we didn't order anymore. We only have enough for our Immigration paperwork, so if our dossier requires them, we need to order more, because at least one of the states we have to get them from took 2 months to return them last adoption.

[spaypets]

I'm pretty sure (but not positive) that I needed birth certificates for the dossier-- I'd go ahead and order them anyway, just to be safe.

I seem to recall that the dossier also required that the children in the house be interviewed about their feelings about the adoption, but maybe that requirement has changed.

Good luck! We loved India and our daughter is wonderful!

[ll_bay]

Spaypets is right on both accounts, in our experience. We are adopting our third child from India and needed birth certificates of everyone in the home, and both children had to be interviewed and asked specific questions by the SW. Plus, if eldest dd had been 8 at time of child acceptance (she's 7 now), she would have had to write a simple letter expressing her feelings about wanting a sibling. That part may be different depending on city, however (we're adopting from Bangalore this time). The birth certificate thing was true of Delhi, where our first two are from, as well.

Waiting for your agency's first-hand info is your best bet in the end, however. Our agency really spelled things out for us this time; our first agency did a pretty good job too, and answered all our questions on the stuff that wasn't clear.

[Colorbind love]

We're adopting from Bangalore. So, my 8.5 year old needs to write a letter? He's not going to like that part, he'll think I'm adding onto his schoolwork on him. What does the letter need to cover, because he's not that great at writing and expressing yet. Guess I'd better get him started on that. Do I include that in the dossier itself or does it go to the homestudy person?

[ll_bay]

If I remember right, ours would have had to go with the actual child acceptance paperwork, which normally comes after the dossier, unless you happen to be doing it all at once (which we did for our first adoption, but not this one). There were very clear guidelines and a model in our guidebook. It was very simple, I do remember that, and I think my dh and I sort of assumed we'd be "helping" a lot, though she does know some about word processing from school and actually writes quite well. Thankfully, the daughter in question is very excited about her little brother so probably wouldn't have seen it as a burden, but on the days she's got a lot of homework or is feeling grouchy, I can imagine it might've been a struggle. Oh, and that part was a whole different thing from the part of the homestudy where the SW interviewed the children we have.

Where in Bangalore is your child? What US agency are you using? What does your timeframe look like? We're adopting a 2 year old boy from VCT, through Holt. Sorry for all the questions, but it's exciting to meet other people in similar situations!

[Colorbind love]

Sorry, I never got back to you.

I still don't know what orphanage, but we're going through AIAA.

At the moment, we're at a standstill. Our homestudy needs our state criminal background check. Its been a month and the state is supposed to have it back by now, but apparently the state isn't too worried about their own requirements.

I do now have most of the birth certs back as well as marriage certs, tax returns and we all had physicals so the doctor can do more forms of necessary.

I don't think there is much more we can do at this point but wait for our homestudy to come in. I think I've gotten everything I can get at this point and will just have to push as fast as I can once the homestudy is written.

[ll_bay]

How frustrating these delays can be. I feel for you. But yes, you can push hard once the homestudy is done. That's what we did with both of our adoptions. Thankfully, though, our SW was one to push too, so there was never too big a delay to get the homestudy...

[marie2005]

I just thought I'd add that our agency list of dossier requirements included lab report for HIB and Hep B tests, not that they take long, a couple days turnaround.

We were supposed to include birth certificates, but they could be copies.

And we had to get local police clearance letters (also not notarized).

[Colorbind love]

Well, hopefully we'll be submitting this stupid thing next week. Just thought I would update (finally)! We did NOT need a sibling letter, didn't need the Hib or Hep B screening either, just a letter stating we were free of communicable diseases.

However, we've spent a month in a nightmare trying to get our dossier certified. We've just sent back our marriage certificate that the state which issued it found to be invalid because they changed registrars 5 weeks ago. Had to order a new marriage license (expidite it) and then send it back. The bulk of our dossier was rejected and returned twice by our state of residence for typos. Its been a nightmare and a half.

Ironically, our referral paperwork was submitted back to our agency last week, well ahead of the dossier. And, Bangalore has been antsy for our dossier since the first of January. They are intending to 'fast track' his adoption. Not sure what that will actually mean, whether it means really fast or before Christmas is still anyone's guess.

But, we were able to send a care package to our son last week and are awaiting new pictures and more medical information when our case worker returns from India soon.