CASTLE ROCK, Colo. (KUSA) – A Colorado family had nearly completed adopting three Ukrainian sisters. But then Russia invaded the country, bringing the process to a halt.

Now, the family doesn’t know when they’ll be able to bring the girls home.

Amy Martin said the adoption paperwork can be overwhelming.

“These are the initial applications, the immigrant forms, all the dossier documents, the home study documents,” she said. “It’s just a lot.”

But Martin said it’s all worth it to adopt the three girls from Ukraine. Her family hosted them at their home in Castle Rock, Colorado, during Christmas.

Prohibition of individual adoptions

Individual international adoptions are prohibited . This provision is immediately applicable.

Henceforth, all candidates for adoption holding approval, a mandatory prerequisite for any process, must be accompanied by an organization authorized for adoption (OAA) or by the French Adoption Agency (AFA) in their international adoption procedures, including in the case of intra-family adoptions.

A derogation is provided for candidates for adoption holding an authorization valid on February 22, 2022 (date of publication of the law), and whose adoption file has been registered with the Mission of the international adoption (MAI) no later than August 22, 2022 (within six months after the promulgation of the law).

If you find yourself in this situation, the MAI invites you to register as soon as possible .

Adopted children are at greater risk of developmental and attachment disorders than unadopted children. This is the result of a new study by the German Youth Institute in Munich. In addition, there are too few counseling services for affected families.

Fewer and fewer people in Germany are adopting a child. The numbers have halved in recent years. In 2020, for example, 3,600 children were adopted, two thirds of them are stepchildren or children further away, only one third are strangers' children.

Nobody knows exactly why the numbers are declining. It is assumed that it is due to the ever-improving reproductive medicine that couples are still able to fulfill their desire to have children. In addition, there are high hurdles for couples who would like to adopt a child. So far there has been little research on the subject of adoptive families in Germany.

About the article: "'Become a foster parent!': The very special bread bag"

Largest survey of German adoptive families to date

Specialist support and counselling is to be set up to help families affected by historical forced adoption.

The Scottish Government has pledged funding of around £145,000 to help women who were forced to give up their children, as well as the fathers and children involved in the distressing practice.

Peer support groups will also be established and research commissioned to look at how existing support can be improved.

The move comes as a fresh appeal is made for those affected by the process to share their experiences on a dedicated government webpage and questionnaire.

Children’s minister Clare Haughey said: “Tragically, in the past there were practices which resulted in some women feeling forced to give up their children. I offer my sincere sympathies to all those whose lives were profoundly changed as a result.

The latest government data says approximately 60% of couples going for adoption in the Thane district have shown an inclination towards a girl child. We can see this as a big shift in the orthodox Indian mindset that preferred a male child to carry a family legacy. While international celebrities such as Mandira Bedi, Sushmita Sen, Raveena Tandon and Sunny Leone, have adopted girls, parents from the Thane district, too, are increasingly opting for adopting daughters.

Aditi Vinay who adopted two daughters said, “Becoming a parent is a lifelong assurance. If you don’t already have kids, be sure you are ready for all that is involved with adoption. If you do have kids, be sure you have the time and the space to care for another child. The number of homeless children will decrease to zero if each family adopts one child.”

Five-year data compiled by the Thane district women and child welfare department and accessed by Times of India shows that of the 213 child adoptions registered and executed since 2016, around 122, or roughly 60%, were for a girl child. Social workers engaged in counselling prospective adoptive parents said a majority of couples, including those who are childless or already have boys in their families, preferred a daughter believing that girls are more likely to settle in easily with the family and look after them when they’re old. Officials also said there were almost negligible cases of adopted girls being returned over not being able to bond with their foster families.

CARA CEO, Lt. Col. Deepak Kumar, said Indian couples desired girls for adoption. If 10,000 people want to adopt boys, there are 15,000 who want to adopt girls”.

Child rights activists claim that more girls are available for adoption, and subsequently, more girls are being adopted. Nothing much has changed in society.

Adrian Nastase: under pressure to control child traffiking 

By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard in Brussels 12:01AM GMT 04 Feb 2004

The European Commission has warned Romania to halt the export of children for adoption or face a bar on EU membership and the severance of aid funds.

The commission wrote to Adrian Nastase, the prime minister, warning that his government's conduct failed to meet the "political criteria" on human rights required for EU accession. Romania is hoping to join in 2007.

The unprecedented letter, signed by Gunther Verheugen, the enlargement commissioner, not only threatened to cut off aid but also referred to the need for a "recovery of funds" already spent unless Bucharest can account for its actions.

Officials say £42 million of aid is at risk.

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The dispute comes after Italian reports that Romania had sent 105 children to Italy on dubious pretexts, confirming suspicions in Brussels that the Nastase government is turning a blind eye to racketeering by adoption agencies and corrupt officials.

Romania imposed a moratorium on adoptions in 2001 at the request of Lady Nicholson, a Liberal-Democrat MEP and the European Parliament's "rapporteur" on Romania. She said organised crime was exploiting reports about the country's orphanages as a "cover" for a much wider child-abuse industry.

More than 30,000 children were shipped out for adoption over 10 years, generating hundreds of millions of pounds for agencies and middle men. Each child fetched £20,000 to £35,000.

Few were actually orphans and some were stolen babies. Last month it was disclosed that a maternity hospital at Ploiesti had been tricking mothers by pretending their premature babies died at birth.

The infants were in fact "fattened" in a pre-natal wing for six months before being exported. It is claimed that 23 babies were smuggled out by the hospital last year alone.

In other cases, vulnerable young girls were pressured into giving up their babies for as little as £300 cash.

Lady Nicholson said little had changed since the moratorium was imposed. "It is a well-oiled machine that seems to rest on a partnership between the adoption agencies and corrupt officials, from top to bottom of the administration. There are wonderful people making huge efforts to stop it but they are not winning.

"The courts appear to be corrupt. One judge rubber-stamped 92 cases in a single morning. There are no files. Children are just a number in a computer. The agencies get a court order and grab the child. It's kidnapping.

"Some are girls and boys approaching puberty. They are sent off against their will to an unknown future. I shudder to think of their fate. You see advertisements on the internet for pre-pubescent virgins with a $30,000 price tag."

Outraged Euro-MPs are demanding that Romania's request to join the EU be put on ice. A draft resolution by the European Parliament calls for "root-and-branch reform of the justice system" before renewing accession talks.

According to official figures, 1,000 Romanian children have been adopted abroad over the last two years but the real number could be much higher.

Mr Nastase said they were "pipeline cases" dating from commitments back to 2001, claiming that foreign parents were already living with the children in Romania.

But Mr Verheugen disputed the claim, noting that most were taken from foster homes or "other suitable care situations" in Romania.

An EU official said: "They were happily settled. Romania is a poor country and so these families don't have swimming pools in the yard but foster care is no worse than in any other country."

While most adoptive parents in the EU and America offer loving homes, the Commission said lack of tracking data made it impossible to know where children ended up.

"There is a very big risk that a number fall into the hands of paedophile networks. I didn't believe it for a long time but all the evidence points that way," said an official.

Romanian officials say they are caught in a tug-of-war between two camps. While one part of the EU demands an adoption ban, Italy, Spain, and France want laxer rules to meet their collapsing fertility rates.

Adrian Nastase: under pressure to control child traffiking By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard in Brussels 12:01AM GMT 04 Feb 2004

The European Commission has warned Romania to halt the export of children for adoption or face a bar on EU membership and the severance of aid funds.

The commission wrote to Adrian Nastase, the prime minister, warning that his government's conduct failed to meet the "political criteria" on human rights required for EU accession. Romania is hoping to join in 2007.

The ratification by Ukraine of the Hague Convention on the Protection of Children and Cooperation in Respect of Inter-Country Adoption will oblige countries whose citizens adopted Ukrainian children to provide full information about the fate of the adoptees, the Ukrainian president's children's rights commissioner, Yuriy Pavlenko, has said.

“The ratification of the Hague Convention would oblige the countries in which Ukrainian children were adopted to provide us with full information about their fate, as the 89 countries that ratified the Convention include the United States, Italy, France, Spain, Israel, Canada, the citizens of which have adopted the most children over the period of [Ukraine’s] independence,” he told Interfax-Ukraine on Wednesday.

According to the children’s ombudsman, the major priorities of the Hague Adoption Convention are support for and the protection of the biological family, as well as comprehensive support for and the development of national adoption.

In addition, he said that inter-country adoption, in accordance with the Convention, takes place only after due consideration of all possibilities for the placement of the child within the state of origin, provided that inter-country adoption is in the child’s best interests.

“The procedure proposed by the Hague Convention ensures that the child is affected as little as possible in all processes and procedures related to inter-country adoptions,” Pavlenko said.

The first time Elspeth Ross knew she was going away was when she returned home from her work sewing shirts in Glasgow city centre to find a case in the hall.

“I had never seen the case before. I never even knew there was a case in the house,” Elspeth, now 76, says.

Elspeth also did not know she was pregnant, her condition worked out by a family friend and, she believes, possibly a back street abortionist who examined her. Elspeth’s mother and sisters never talked about sex. She had grown up with a boy in the neighbourhood, Ian, and got pregnant aged 15 without knowing what had happened.

In Scotland in 1962, pregnancy outwith marriage was seldom talked about, and often covered up. Later, it emerged, there had been some chat that Ian’s parents did not want the couple to wed as they needed their son’s wages. Certainly, nobody talked to Elspeth as their baby grew within her.

She was instead ushered away that night with a suitcase she had never seen before, to a place she had never been before.

HIAWATHA, Iowa (WOI) - A Hiawatha family’s plan to adopt a 15-year-old from Ukraine has been put on hold after Russia attacked the country.

Jenna and Scott Breckenridge adopted three sons from Ukraine, who arrived just months ago, and they’re in the process of adopting a 15-year-old boy named Artem.

They were in the middle of the adoption process when Russia’s invasion began.

Artem had been living in an orphanage in Ukraine. He and the other kids at the orphanage have moved to a bomb shelter.

“At 5 a.m., he saw and heard rockets. Said the windows were shaking and there was a big flash. He said in Berdyansk, the airport was bombed,” Jenna said. “So that’s the city he’s in right now.”

HANCOCK COUNTY, In. (WXIX) - Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is personal for a Tri-State family in the final stages of adopting two orphans from Ukraine.

The Hansome family is already one strong with a Ukrainian-born son, 15-year-old Andrey whom they adopted in 2020. Now Joe and NaTosha Hansome are trying to adopt brother orphans Misha, 16, and Andrii, 17.

The brothers were best friends with Andrey in Ukraine before Andrey moved stateside.

But now the adoption process is in limbo.

“If you can just imagine what it’s like to have your kids in another country when a war is going on. It’s really difficult, and then not knowing if they will ever get to be with us again,” said NaTosha.