RENEWAL OF DECLARATION

My declaration is due for renewal on 20th April so I contacted the Adoption Board there recently to find out what I needed to do as it was all a bit unclear. 

I was told to apply for the new Declaration about 4-6 weeks prior to the current Declaration expiring.
The Authority requires you to return the original Declaration. If that is not possible, then the Authority requires that you submit a letter from the Court/Authority in the country where it is lodged explaining same. In that case the Authority will issue a letter stating that your Declaration is valid from 1/11/2010 to 31/10/2012.

My agency has very kindly contacted the MOJ to request this letter for me so I'm just waiting for the letter to arrive.  Hopefully it won't be too long of a wait.

Update from our Agency in Bulgaria

We received the following update from our Agency in Bulgaria just before Christmas.

The number of foreign adoptive applicants, registered in the period 2004 and 2009 is 581.  60 of these have already received referrals.

From the other 521 candidates:

-                     401 have confirmed their will to continue their adoption procedure in Bulgaria.

-                     35 have not confirmed yet their will, so the Ministry of Justice established a deadline till 31 January 2011. Any applicant who has not sent by this date his/her written consent to continue the adoption procedure in Bulgaria will be removed from the register. Most probably, most of these applicants have withdrawn from the procedure;

-                     85 applicants are removed from the register.

The total number of applicants registered between the years 2004 and 2009 is 436.

The number of applicants registered in 2010 (until 15.12.2010) is 683, 14 of whom are removed from the register, 70 have received a referral. So the number of applicants who are waiting for a referral is 599. This number does not contain the applicants waiting for registration.

The total number of applicants in the register as per the information from 15 December 2010 is 1035 (436+599).

The Ministry of Justice will release the current number of children (and their age) in the register for intercountry adoption.

UPDATE ON BULGARIAN ADOPTIONS

Yesterday we received an update from our Agency in Bulgaria.  The email confirmed that 3000 children's files had been transfered from the domestic adoption register to the international adoption register.  The MOJ has already registered 400 of these children on the international adoption register.    The new family code provides that these children must be placed for international adoption within 2 months of them being entered on this register.

By mid December the MOJ will have made referrals to all the applicants from 2006 and 2007.  Within the next four months they will also have made referrals to all applicants from 2008.

The MOJ have also confirmed that from the beginning of November the Intercountry Adoption Council have started to meet twice a week instead of the usual once a week.  This should really increase the number of monthly referrals made and in turn reduce the waiting time for referrals.

This is great news to all of us who were expecting a 2-3 year wait.  You never know, by this time next year we could be parents!

  

Waiting.

Waiting is a big part of the adoption process.  The past couple of years have been filled with lots of adoption related activities such as attending the preparation course, going through the home assessment, researching countries / agencies, gathering documents, getting them notarized and apostilled and finally sent off.  

Now that that's all behind me the next stage is just waiting.  We don't know how long we will be waiting - it may be a year or two or even three (but hopefully not).  I'm usually fairly patient but I'm finding this wait quite difficult.  I suppose if we knew exactly how long it would take, it might make the waiting easier, I don't know.  So, to feel that I'm doing something or that I'm some way in control, I have been learning Bulgarian and buying clothes that I intend to bring with me to the orphanage as a donation.  Here's a sample of what I have so far.