Is Your Post-Placement Report Late?

I’m sure all the parents who are already home from Russia celebrated the new accreditations just like the parents who are waiting. But if the agency you used was not among this first group to be accredited, ask yourself this question: Could your late post-placement report be holding things up?

For those of your now waiting to travel to Russia for an adoption, you should know that your paperwork obligations to the Russian government do not end when you leave Moscow with your new child. For three years after you come home, you will need to regularly report back about your child’s health and well-being.

Lauri at the Adoptive Parenting Blog explained at length what is needed for a post-placement report early this year. It is a great resource to keep close at hand. Working with your social worker on a post-placement report requires all the paperwork skills you mustered for adoption process and then some, since you will be gathering information about not only you, your home and your family, but lots of details on your new child as well. Erin over at the Transracial/Transcultural Adoption Blog recently had some nice tips on organizing the paperwork. Some agencies have a staffer whose sole job is bird-dogging post-placement reports.

That’s important because if too many reports are late, the Russian authorities will not look kindly on that agency. The Goeppners, who are now waiting for new referrals to replace those lost during the slowdown, noted last week that their agency’s partner agency was not in the first group accredited because of missing post-placement reports from the partner agency’s families.

And Russian authorities have done more than delay work for tardy agencies in the past. In April 2006, a prosecutor urged Moscow to yank the licenses of 12 U.S. agencies over late post-placement reports. That didn’t happen, but the threat prompted a lengthy reminder from the U.S. State Department about the importance of this paperwork.

So, if your paperwork is running behind, can you move getting it done to the top of your to-do list?

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