[amberl10]

We are going to meet with an adoption counselor next week. I was just wondering, from the time you start the process until you go get your child, how long is that about???

[cwhammond]

We sent in our initial application in late Nov. 05 and are hoping to travel in Sept/Oct. (for 6 weeks) and be home by the end of Oct.
You can count on a year as a safe bet since it seems things are slowing down a bit.

[hml1976]

It does look like things are slowing down a bit, it was only 8-9mths total for us last time and we were hoping for the same this time but I think we'll travel in late spring and signed our application in late May, our dossier is almost complete. Depends on your parameters a lot too, we are interested in adopting an infant Kazakh boy, which is faster than girls or caucasian babies, but not as fast as an older child.

[JenniferKaz]

Our timeline was about a year, but that was slowed down a bit because our agency worked in only 2 regions, one being teh city of Almaty which closed down as we were about to submit our dossier, and when Kaz added/changed requirements which casued us to re-do much of our dossier.


While we were travelling to Astana,a family who started their process in January was travelling in May....super fast.

[dlbmcgill]

For us it was 16 months from the time we submitted our application until we traveled, but during this time Kaz changed some of the regulations and we had to redo part of our dossier after it had already gone to the consulate.

[sienna5]

It will be about 14 months from signing with agencies and my travel date (have my LOI) - so probably about 16 months by the time I bring my child home. However, like a few of the current bunch, I got caught in the changes last fall. All my paperwork was about ready and we had to wait for final new rules, make a lot of changes and do a few new forms. So that probably added about 2 months. And I have a separate home study agency and I think that took a little longer since I had to duplicate a lot of information with completely separate forms and requirements. So maybe a month off for that. I think that a year is probably a pretty good estimate - could be some faster or could be slower if things change (and in international adoption they do always seem to change).

I think it also depends on how much time you can give to working on your paperwork. While I was very dilligent, I had some big work projects and so could not always arrange quick work-hour appointments. And even though I did something almost every night, I also decided that I wanted to make time for still having at least a bit of a life. If you have a very flexible schedule and were willing to spend more time, I think you could knock off the paperchase faster than I did.