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I'm Ruth Lincoln and I've worked in the Office of Children's Issues for seven years. I currently
handle intercountry adoption issues for countries in South and Central Asia.
Maintaining a dialogue with foreign adoption authorities and clarifying their adoption
laws and procedures for our prospective adoptive parents and adoption service providers is
a big part of what I do.
In the countries that I cover, there are a lot of prospective adoptive parents who are
interested in adopting a relative, often a niece or a nephew, and bringing them to the
United States.
When the Convention entered into force for the United States in April 2008, some of those
parents were unclear how to proceed under the Convention. To help address this issue,
we met with the Central Authorities for the Hague Adoption Convention to clarify their
procedures for adopting a relative.
Once we had a clear picture of the policy and procedure for adopting a relative under
the Convention, we were able to share this information with our prospective adoptive
parents and their adoption service providers.
This is just one example of the type of conversation that I and my colleagues in the Office of
Children's Issues have with foreign adoption officials on a daily basis.
One of my best days in adoption was when I was able to help facilitate communication between
a family in the United States who had recently adopted a child from a non-Convention country
and a family from another country who in the process of adopting that child's sibling.
The American family reached out to us for assistance in providing the other family with
their contact information because they wanted the children to remain in touch.
Because of the strong relationship we have with the adoption authority in the country
where the other family is from, we were able to ask their assistance in helping to facilitate
the communication between the families. I learned a short time later that the two families
had in fact been in contact via Skype and plan to visit each other in the future.
It was a great feeling to know that I had played a small part in establishing communication
between the two families. Not only have the children found families, but they were able
to preserve their relationship with their sibling.