International Adoption Guide

Thank goodness for the medical profession. In the whole adoption process doctors are the only one's who seem to understand things from both the parents perspective and the child's needs. Walking today in the park with an international adoption doctor the 'hot' topic of social workers telling infertile potential parents that they need to use contraceptives during the adoption process. This is a discussion that has been going on in the international adoption community and there have been emotive and rational arguments going back and forward. The doctor, without a shadow of a doubt, said 'surely that contravenes every single human moral and written right?' You cannot tell someone to do something, you can only advise them.'
The discussion did not go much further - we both understood the implications.
The rights and needs of the parents are very much looked over in the international adoption process. The UK's focus is solely on the rights and needs of the child or should that be "a child", as the children they are protecting are unknown? I feel that the parents and the children are equally important.
It is of no benefit to any child to have overwrought, stressed and exhausted parents, just at the time when they need calm, thoughtful, attentive and kind care. That time of transition from the orphanage/foster home into the family is so vital for the long-term mental health of the child. But no, just when have the first fluttering of parent hood, you are yanked back into the bureaucratic nightmare. Discovering changes in process that your local authorities, who you have spent the last 2 years with, and a huge chunk of your child's education fund with, have failed to notify you about.
Back in Moscow my friend's return has been delayed...she still can't bring her son home to settle him in his new environment...and she has had to spend more of his eduction fund on buying another air ticket.....why? Because when she went to the British Embassy to get the UK entry visa for her son - she found out that the whole process for acquiring a visa for an adopted child has changed.
More letters, documents, downloads, photographs, payments have to be acquired, flights have to be rearranged, pick ups altered, cats back home be fed, timely bills to be paid. Imagine doing this in freezing conditions, in an unknown city, with a foreign language and script that you cannot even decipher, on your own, from a hotel room with a toddler in toe. Not only a toddler - but your child who you have only just met and don't know and who you have waited for, for so long and all the personal emotions going through you, that I expressed in yesterdays blog...I don't think you could have any idea.
But surely the social workers who have worked so closely with you for the past couple of years could anticipate and prepare you for and perhaps, dare I suggest it - help you?
How different would it be if the 'professionals' did their job.
One can only imagine a world where the social worker calls up and says "The immigration/visa laws have changed - I am sending you an e-mail with all the details, the forms you need, where you can get them, how much it costs and what you need to do. If you have any problems or questions please do not hesitate to call."
Would that not be honouring the parent and thus respecting the needs of the child? Would that not make those first all important few days of bonding, so paramount for the child, easier? Would that not reduce the child's trauma and thus their issues of attachment and their long-term mental health?
Of course it would. I understand this and you understand this. How then is it possible that the adoption authority do not?