Agency’s collapse crushes adoption dream

Publication date: 17 July 2009

Couples left in lurch by bankruptcy

BY KRISTY NEASE, THE OTTAWA CITIZENJULY 17, 2009 12:01 AM

OTTAWA-Three years ago, Christine Côté of Orléans was diagnosed with polycystic ovarian syndrome and was told that having children was an impossibility.

Côté and her husband Jean-François, both 38, have had family experience with adoption, so that made their decision easy. They wanted a family, no matter the cost.

They began the years-long process of securing documentation, an agency and the finances necessary to make it happen.

In April, they gave a deposit to Imagine Adoption of Cambridge, Ont., which is operated by the Kids Link International Adoption Agency, one of 19 international adoption agencies approved by the Ontario Ministry of Children and Youth Services. They decided to adopt a child from Ethiopia.

Three months and $12,000 later, and still without a confirmed adoptee, the couple learned on Monday that Imagine Adoption had declared bankruptcy.

“It’s day by day,” Christine said about dealing with the news while sitting at the dining table with her husband. “It’s something I’ve dreamed about, being a mom, for a long time, so then to find out I can’t be one biologically, and then deciding on the adoption … and then now going through all that, it’s not easy. The home study is an invasive process; they talk about everything. Everything.”

Jean-François said one would expect the agencies themselves to be as thoroughly scrutinized and checked as potential parents were.

“I mean, they even come to our house and inspect our house to see if we’re safe for a child,” Christine said. “So what’s the ministry doing to inspect these agencies?

“I don’t know. It doesn’t look like a lot.”

The Côtés say they’ve resigned themselves to the fact their $12,000 is probably gone forever. They sit at the bottom of a list of creditors, and they’re unsecured, along with every other affected family.

However, they would like to get back their home-study application package, a bevy of original documents they need so they can look elsewhere and start again. The ministry only accepts originals.

If they don’t get it back, they’ll have to start over, securing police checks, fingerprints, medical certificates, reference letters and more. It would cost them about $500 and months of time more than they have already spent on those matters.

Christine e-mailed their MPP, Phil McNeely, and received word that BDO Dunwoody Ltd., the financial recovery company handling the bankruptcy, would first look after the children in Ethiopia who had already been assigned adoptive parents. The response also said McNeely would be in contact with the ministry to see what further steps could be taken for families such as the Côtés who hadn’t yet been paired with children, Christine said.

A notice posted since Monday on a BDO Dunwoody website dedicated to the Christian non-profit agency’s bankruptcy says there are not enough funds in the bank to service the families using Kids Link.

The notice, by Susan E. Taves, senior vice-president of BDO Dunwoody, also says Susan Hayhow, director of Kids Link, and her partner, Andrew Morrow, who also works for Imagine Adoption, had arrived in Africa on Monday and had been contacted by BDO.

According to other documents on the site, the agency has $1,086,004 in liabilities and $723,004 in assets. An additional claim of $800,000 has been put forward by BDO Dunwoody for the affected families.

A call to Taves, who is based in Kitchener, late Thursday afternoon was not immediately returned.

Christine Côté said she had been told that BDO Dunwoody would send letters to all affected families today with more information.

Countries: Canada, Ethiopia

Organizations: Imagine Adoption