I wrote last week that eight American agencies had been accredited by the Russian government to handle adoptions. I was wrong--and right.

Let me explain.

As you can now see at the top of the Web site for the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, seven agencies were accredited. They are Catholic Social Services of the Diocese of Charlotte, Children's Home Society & Family Services, Cradle of Hope Adoption Center, The Cradle Society,
Family & Children's Agency, Frank Adoption Center and International Assistance Group. A French group was also accredited.

The eighth name on my list of U.S. agencies was Adoption Options. It has been accepted as a non-governmental organization, or NGO, by Russia and it has its own accreditation in process. But Adoption Options has been a Frank Adoption partner for eight years, and so when it told its families about re-accreditation in its blog, it was referring to that of its partner agency, not its own application.

Brent Yoder, the executive director of Adoption Options, told me that he expects his agency will receive its own accreditation--its first on its own--in September. He said that although Adoption Options is also a partner of Frank Foundation CAI, he felt it was necessary to have its own certification. "It gives us a stronger base for our partnership to work from and allows our families a fallback if one of the agencies' accreditation would be held up."

This seems to be the thinking at other Frank partners. The Datz Foundation told me that it has applied for NGO status and will be seeking separate accreditation, but also continues to operate as a Frank partner for now.

Julie Hogan at Frank Foundation CAI told me that, while there is nothing in the new accreditation rules that prevents these agencies from continuing to operate as Frank partners, Frank has been encouraging them to seek their own accreditations. (The two Frank entities are sister organizations: Frank Foundation has traditionally focused on humanitarian work and children's rights issues while Frank Adoption Center has done what its name would indicate it does.) Russia has indicated that it won't hand out first-time accreditations until all of the re-accreditations are taken care of.

So apologies if I confused anybody last week. I'll monitor the next round of accreditations more carefully.