Written by Inessa Shiryaeva

The Russian adoptions have been going well since the beginning of the year.

We are happy to report that many precious and beautiful children found their loving homes in the past several months.  Many families returned home with their children and we are extremely happy and honored to be a part of it.  We are also glad to know that the families are adjusting well and experiencing the joy and challenges of being parents.

We are sure you will enjoy the pictures of the little miracles who recently arrived home.  We would like to wish all the best to all the families and hope that their experience will be inspiring, encouraging and supportive to those who are currently waiting for their invitations, referrals, and travel.

The program is currently working well, as we have families traveling on their 1^st and 2^nd trips and accepting referrals.  FTIA is currently waiting on receiving it’s re-accreditation in Russia with the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation.  FTIA is included in the second half of agencies to be re-accredited with the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation, with the other 20+ international adoption agencies.  The first round of re-accreditation certificates were issued to the agencies whose accreditation expired last year.  FTIA’s accreditation expired in February of this year, and FTIA was one of the last adoption agencies to have their accreditation expired.  The Ministry of Education has not met in some time to sign off in the remaining 20+ agencies’ re-accreditation. 

Unfortunately, as many of you may be aware of, there have been a few cases of children adopted from Russia being killed by their adoptive parents in the USA.  Due to these events the Ministry of Education and Science has announced that they are considering requesting a number of measures to strengthen the international adoption process.

These include:

1. Require pre-adoption parental training/ counseling
2. Require psychological testing of US parents as part of their home study process
3. Outlaw independent adoptions.

None of these measures have gone into effect and the Ministry of Education and Science has been quoted as saying that these proposals would require further government review before they could be passed.  It is unknown how long it would take such proposals to pass, or if they would pass.

The Ministry of Education and Science and the Prosecutor’s General Office are also inspecting the activities of the international adoption agencies in Russia for the compliance with all the requirements, including post placement requirements, registration of the adopted children with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs/Russian Consulates and others.  We would like to assure you that FTIA is up-to date with the post placement reports and registration and all other necessary requirements.

As soon as we have more updates on re-accreditation and adoption process in general, we will inform all our families.

We would like to thank all our adoptive families for the timely submission of their post placement reports and for making our days brighter with the pictures of their children and families.  We also would like to emphasize how important the timely submission of the reports is.  Also, please remember that the post placement visit should take place in your house, with both parents present, and their children, and 10-12 colored pictures are required to be submitted with each post placement report.  FTIA is sending the reminders to the families by email ahead of time to help you initiate your post placement visit on time and contact your home study agency for this purpose.  For this and other purposes of communication we would like to ask you to keep us informed of any changes of your email addresses, as well as phone numbers and residence addresses.

We would like to assure you that we are always working diligently on your behalf and please do not hesitate to contact us any time you have any questions, concerns, need any assistance with any resources or support.

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