News on the ex-NAC

It hasn't been posted by the Embassy yet, but it seems to be official that the current NAC (Natl Adoption Centre) will shut down at the beginning of April. From then until May 1, they will complete the processing of families already in-country pursuing adoption. All other paperwork will be on hold until the new ministry takes over on May 1. It's a little odd, but I'm really excited about this new ministry taking over. There are still a lot of unknowns--we may still not be able to adopt even after May 1, but it's great to see Ukraine making progress and trying to update their system. In the past, the adoption process for Ukraine was marked with corruption and accusations of corruption. Hopefully the new setup will eliminate those possibilities so the focus will be on finding children homes, not making money on the side.

There are many of us who feel that it would be beneficial to the whole situation if the NAC (or whatever it will be called now) would charge a processing fee for the adoptions. They don't because they don't want it to appear that they are selling children, which I totally understand. But charging $1000 per adoption could make such a difference over there. That money could go towards computerizing their database, facilitating updates on children already in the system (right now it is usually sticky notes, and often times the files are not updated with any regularity), improving orphanage conditions, etc. This is why I'm excited about the new NAC starting on May 1. There are so many possibilities!