Contents
International adoption step by step
Obtain accreditation
Obtaining accreditation remains the first essential step, whether you adopt abroad or in France. Without it, no court will pronounce adoption, which will never be legal. The approval is issued by the General Council of your department after the constitution of a file, and following interviews with social workers and psychologists.
Choose country
If you decide to adopt abroad, several criteria come into play. There are, and this is not insignificant, the affinities that we can have with a culture or travel memories. But we must also take into account concrete realities. Some countries are very open to adoption while others, Muslim countries for example, are quite opposed to it. Some governments have a very precise idea of the candidates and only accept couples. The profile of the child you want to adopt also matters: do you want a baby, are you embarrassed by the color difference, are you ready to adopt a sick or disabled child?
To fend for yourself or to be accompanied
There are different steps you can take if you want to adopt. It is possible not to go through any structure and to go directly to the country where you want to adopt a child, it is individual adoption. For a long time, the majority of French people opted for this solution. This is no longer the case today. In 2012, individual adoptions represented 32% of adoptions. They are in sharp decline. Two other options are therefore possible. You can go through a authorized adoption agency (OAA). The AAOs have an authorization for a given country, and are organized by department. The last possibility is to turn to the French adoption agency (AFA), created in 2006, which cannot refuse any file but which, in fact, has long waiting lists.
Pay, yes, but how much?
Adoption abroad is expensive. It is necessary to plan the cost of the file which requires translations, the purchase of visas, the price of on-site travel, participation in the operation of the OAA, ie several thousand euros. But also, unofficially, the “donation” to the orphanage which can also be valued at several thousand euros. This practice shocks some who believe that a child cannot be bought. Others find it normal to compensate those countries which, if they were richer, would certainly not let their children go.
Manage a difficult wait
This is what often seems so painful to adopters: the wait, those months, sometimes those years when nothing happens. International adoption is generally faster than in France. It takes on average two years between the request for approval and the matching. Depending on the country and the requirements of the applicants, this time limit varies.
Know the Hague Convention
The Hague Convention ratified by France in 1993 has a direct consequence for the procedures in each country that has signed it (and there are more and more of them in recent years): this text indeed prohibits adoptions by “free candidate” or by individual process, and obliges applicants to go through an OAA or a national agency such as the AFA. However, half of French postulants still adopt outside of any support structure.