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This is a very nice way to end the month of January: Seven more adoption agencies have been accredited by the Russian government. The decrees, all dated January 28, cover three agencies from the United States, and one each from France, Italy, Spain and Sweden.
Here’s who they are and a little bit about what they do:
The agencies accredited from the U.S. are ABC Adoption Services of Roanoke, Virginia, Beacon House Adoption Services of Pensacola, Florida, and World Child International Adoption Agency of Silver Spring, Maryland. Interestingly, ABC had been operating in Russia under the aegis of Carolina Adoption Services, but now is fully accredited on its own. Beacon House, which had been previously accredited, says on its Web site that after its last accreditation expired it was working in Russia through Cradle of Hope. That agency was one of the first to be re-licensed in Russia under the country’s new accreditation rules last July.
I know at least one of my readers will be wildly happy to hear that the French agency is De Pauline à Anaelle. (Congratulations to you, Aurelie, and I hope your family is all united in Paris soon.) The agency is based in the town of Argentat in central France and operates throughout most of the country’s administrative regions. But here’s something really interesting about the agency: According to its mission statement, it devotes most of its energy to finding homes for older children, children ages five and up.
The Italian agency is La Primogenita International Adoption. It was founded in Piacenza, Italy, in 1982 and has been facilitating adoptions in Russia since 2000. Late last year, a representative from the Green Party to the Italian parliament approached his government to see what could be done to encourage Russia to speed up the accreditation of Italian adoption agencies. Senator Natale Ripamonti noted, in his presentation, that adoptions from Russia represent 17% of all adoptions in Italy.
The Swedish agency is Adoptions Centrrum of Stockholm. The agency, which also goes by the name of Swedish Society for International Child Welfare, has been in operation since 1969. It now operates in more than 20 countries around the world.
And last, but not least, Asociación Nuevo Futuro, of Bilbao, Spain. This agency was founded in 1969 out of a desire to modernize Spanish adoption practices and currently operates 43 facilities for children in Spain. It began its work on international adoption in Croatia in 1992, and now operates in Guatemala, Mexico, Bolivia, Venezuela, Russia, India and Afghanistan.
Congratulations to all these agencies and the families and children they serve.
Image credit:Chatterbox at Morguefile.com
Having adopted older children from Russia my suggestion in finding an agency would be to find one that has post adoption help for these children that we bring home with us and then we find out they have severe mental problems and no help to be found for them.