2004 ANNUAL REPORT

Families Thru International Adoption, Inc. (FTIA) is pleased to provide a report on all of its activities including adoption, continuous quality improvement, humanitarian aid, program development, outreach efforts, and a Hague update for the year 2004.

ADOPTION SERVICES

In the year 2004, FTIA was able to assist adopting parents in completing 475 international adoptions.

The country breakdown for adoption is as follows:

Long Term Planning

In 2004, FTIA underwent development of our second long term plan. Staff and members of the Board of Directors participated in Long Term Plan development. We have continued the keystone of our Long Term Plan as providing the highest quality international adoption service. The Long Term Plan is diagrammed as follows:

Click Map for full size version!

Another key element of our Long Term Plan is further development to our customized software which we call AdopTrak®. We anticipated a major phase to be completed in 2004. Unfortunately, as is often the case with software development, there have been substantial delays. It now appears that we will complete a major part of AdopTrak® development by the end of the first quarter of 2005. The next phase will be to load most of the documents, articles, and forms we currently mail or email to families onto our website with access restricted by password. These changes will allow faster access for adopting parents preparing paperwork, allowing FTIA to make updates and changes in one location and save money and time.

HUMANITARIAN AID

In 2004 FTIA contributed in excess of $78,000 to numerous humanitarian aid projects - all aimed at improving the lives of children. And as in previous years, this total does not include the hours, which are very many, our China team has spent on Heartland Medical Express. Also, not included is overhead and staff time spent on all our international aid projects, e.g. China foster care. As always, 100% of all monies donated to FTIA went overseas. Any monies going for domestic children's services were donated from FTIA's general fund.

In late 2004, a request was sent to our FTIA families asking for donations for 2005 projects. We are thankful for everyone's generosity. A water purification system for orphanages is high on our list of goals for 2005.

PROGRAM DEVELOPMENT

We completed our first adoption from India in 2004. What a celebration. We currently have several more families in process for India. India will never be a country with a large number of adoptions for FTIA, but knowing the need in India it will be very important to us.

Brazil continues to be a country of contradictions. Every time we are there it seems as though everyone is on the same page and ready to move forward. Yet, after we leave each time problems arise with CEJA in Rio de Janeiro. Several adopting parents finally withdrew from adopting from Brazil and switched to other countries. We did establish contact with an attorney from another state in Brazil and have submitted one dossier to the attorney. Hopefully, the adoption process will work better in this state and we can bring home our first child in 2005.

Late 2004, FTIA started collecting the paperwork to register with the Central Authority of Ukraine. We anticipate completing our registration in early 2005. We have not worked in Ukraine before because most programs have adopting parents travel to Ukraine, visit an orphanage and literally "pick" their child. Such a process has many ethical, moral, and legal problems. Under the program we have established, Ukraine will operate more like Russia where parents travel and visit a government office to receive the referral, then visit only that child at the orphanage. However, unlike Russia, Ukraine will only be one trip. We will start slowly in probably the second quarter of 2005.

OUTREACH

In 2004, FTIA was re-licensed in several states. We are still waiting on our NY licensing. We have repeatedly been told "next week", "everything looks fine", etc, but we are still waiting. There are no plans to pursue licensing in any other states at this time.

In 2004, FTIA conducted more than 20 Waiting Families Support Group meetings in the mid-west. Presentations included new topics like Post Adoptions Blues along with presentations on medical issues, early intervention programs, traveling to meet your child, etc. The Waiting Families meetings provide a valuable service for many of our adopting families.

The 2004 Celebration of Children Reunion was held in Indianapolis, Indiana. We were treated to outstanding weather and more than 1,600 adults and children in attendance. The 2005 Celebration of Children Reunion will again be in Indianapolis on July 23rd.

HAGUE UPDATE

Although everyone expected the final CFR's to be published in the Federal Register last year, 2004 came and went with no final regulations published. Now, everyone is expecting the final regulations published in 2005 to implement the Intercountry Adoption Act of 2000.

In 2004, a new bill named ICARE was introduced. This controversial bill died with the session. It is expected to be introduced again in 2005. The ICARE bill consolidates all adoption responsibility in the US State Department effectively removing USCIS from any role. There is wide disagreement on whether the combining all responsibilities in one department is a good idea.

Respectfully submitted,