Brazil Update

By Erin Elpers

I hope you enjoyed the holiday season, and I wish you the very best for the New Year!

FTIA is one of just a handful of U.S. agencies with a Brazilian adoption program. Our Brazil program is one of FTIA´s newest programs. We are currently working in the Brazilian state of Rio de Janeiro. The name of the government office that approves families to adopt Brazilian children and matches the adopting families with children is CEJA - the Committee for International Adoption (Comissäo Estadual Judiciária de Adoçäo) for the state of Rio de Janeiro.

We are pleased to announce that our first few families´ dossiers are making their way through the CEJA review process. The review of these families´ dossiers did suspend right before the Christmas holiday, and will not resume until the beginning of February, as the CEJA office is closed for the holidays from just before Christmas through the end of January. After CEJA completes the review of these families´ dossiers and approves their paperwork, then CEJA will begin to search for children for the families throughout the orphanages in Rio de Janeiro. Several additional families are currently working on collecting their dossier paperwork to submit to Brazil. We expect to have our first several families receiving referrals of children and traveling to Brazil during 2004.

Most of the children available for international adoption from Brazil are between the ages of 3 years and 7 years. Adopting from Brazil does require a more lengthy stay than many other country programs. Adopting parents must typically live in Brazil with the child they are adopting for approximately 45 days (for married couples, usually one parent can request to leave after approximately 15 days). Even though this is quite a bit of time to be away from home, many families are finding ways to work this out, allowing them the opportunity to spend invaluable time with their child in his or her birth country and to live and experience the Brazilian culture first hand. If you would like to take a moment to explore some interesting and informative Brazil-related websites, I have included a few links below: