International adoptions face new hurdles

WASHINGTON — When the Trump administration withdrew proposed regulations last April that international adoption agencies worried would price them out of their jobs, the agencies breathed a collective sigh of relief.

But just seven months later, it appears to be harder than ever to adopt a child

from overseas.

First, the State Department’s Office of Children’s Issues began requiring agencies to provide far more information on adoption service providers overseas, meaning those agencies were now responsible for every person or entity who interacted with the children that they wanted to pair with U.S. families — even if the agency had no ability to influence the actions of those providers. U.S. agencies were also asked to enter into signed legal agreements with foreign providers accepting responsibility for their actions — even if those agreements were prohibited by the country.

Then the Trump administration began re-interpreting regulations on the accreditation of U.S. adoption service providers — a move adoption agencies say will make their alreadystringent accreditation standards harder and far more costly.

Frustrated by the new requirements, the New York-based Council on Accreditation — the leading organization accrediting international adoption agencies for 40 years — announced last month that it would step down as the national accrediting entity. In an October letter explaining the move, President and CEO Richard Klarberg said the new State Department requirements “are inconsistent with COA’s philosophy and mission.”

Klarberg wrote that the agency worried that the changes would further reduce the number of children who can be placed in permanent homes in the United States because their countries of origin will find the changes “to be an infringement of their sovereign rights or unduly burdensome.” And he said the costs of implementing those requirements would become prohibitive both for agencies and for prospective adoptive families.

“Given our long relationship with the (State) Department and the adoption community and our commitment to supporting intercountry adoption, this has been a very difficult decision,” he wrote.

The number of U.S. international adoptions already had been waning since 2004, when U.S. families adopted 22,989 families from overseas. By 2016, the State Department reported, that number had dropped to 5,370.

International adoptions also have plummeted in Ohio. In 2004, Ohioans adopted 906 children from overseas. Last year, they adopted 210.

Some of the slowdown is because some nations — including Russia, Guatemala, South Korea and Ethiopia — have slowed or halted international adoptions to the United States.

But adoption proponents say the regulations that the State Department suggested would have had an even harsher impact, barring agencies from charging prospective adoptive parents for the cost of caring for their child after families are matched, and adding new requirements for parents wanting to adopt from overseas.

While the administration formally withdrew those regulations in April, they’ve moved forward on some of the concepts in those rules, such as putting additional layers on the accreditation process.

Elizabeth Bartholet, director of the Child Advocacy Program at Harvard University, said the administration has been implementing the regulations despite withdrawing them. “They have basically driven the Center on Accreditation out of business,” she said.

Bartholet said the result would “destroy international adoption.”

She said that while the Trump administration has been eager to rescind other Obamaera regulations, it has not paid adequate attention to the actions of the State Department on international adoption. “It’s really, really unfortunate,” she said.

Others say that additional regulations are needed. David Smolin, director of the Center for Children, Law and Ethics at Samford University in Alabama, said the real reason for the drop in international adoptions wasn’t too much regulation, it was too little.

He said many of the countries that dropped out of inter-country adoption did so because of such scandals as when children weren’t actually orphans. In some cases, he said, paperwork about children was filled with inaccurate information about everything from medical conditions to cognitive difficulties.

Among the agencies that have faced such scandals is the Cleveland-based European Adoption Consultants, which the State Department barred last year from conducting international adoption services for three years. In October, an Ohio mother reported that the daughter she’d adopted from Uganda already had a loving family in Africa.

The State Department, for its part, said if the Council on Accreditation stops acting as the accrediting entity for international adoption agencies, another will take over. The department recently designated a new entity to help assume those responsibilities.

Julia Norris, director of affiliate offices and accreditation for the America World Adoption Agency in McLean, Viriginia, said the biggest hurdle has been uncertainty.

Part of the requirement for accreditation is that the agency supervise the foreign providers — a response to high-profile stories of orphanages that had coerced poor parents into giving up their children or, in some cases, kidnapped children from their birth parents.

But for agencies, such a requirement is hard to meet: Who, exactly, are they supervising? And how can agencies have the manpower to make sure that those overseas providers are supervised? The requirements, she and others say, leave wide room for interpretation.

“I understand the point of this,” Norris said. “To eliminate corruption and unethical adoption. I am all for that. It’s just not practical the way they are expecting us to go about this.”

For those on the ground, the change is noticeable, even if the reasons aren’t.

Thomas Taneff, a Columbus-area adoption attorney, said he’s watched as international adoption has become increasingly difficult.

“It’s hard to put my finger on,” he said. “There’s been a definite slowdown.”