E-Mail Lynn L. Wetterberg Romania Update

I was in Romania last week and met with Bogdan Panait, the Secretary of the Romanian Office of Adoptions. I only have a few tidbits of information, but thought I would share.

1) Mr. Panait reiterated the typical party line that only those with Romanian citizenship can adopt. We all know that.

2) The Office of Adoptions would like to work directly with the adoption agencies who apply. They do not want to work with foreign representatives, especially lawyers.

3) There are three agencies in the United States and one agency from Canada that have been licensed to work in Romania. We all know that the Romanian Co-Chair, Debbie Price’s agency is one. Are the other two of you on this listserv?

4) No other agencies have applied as of this date.

5) Should an agency apply, within 30 days they will either be approved or informed of additional documents that they will need to provide for consideration.

6) The documents must all be translated into Romanian before submission.

7) There is no estimated timeframe to receive a referral once a family’s dossier is accepted. They are still saying officially that there are few children in the database.

8) Families who are applying can NOT request a referral from a specific region and must stay in the region where the child is domiciled for the month long “bonding period”. Children will be assigned randomly from the central database…… supposedly.

Lynn’s Comments: The elections in Romania will take place soon and there will be an entire new Parliament before the end of the year. It is likely that the Secretary of the Office of Adoptions will be replaced. Though he would not admit it and stated that there is no intention to change the law, Debbie and I know of a movement within Romania by NGOs to bring a proposal before the new parliament. We will have to wait and see what the new year brings.

If anyone has any further information, please do share it with the list.

Lynn L. Wetterberg

Romania Caucus Co-Chair

Executive Director

Adoption ARK, Inc.

847-215-2755 Ext. 4

Lynn@adoptionark.org

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