What You Need To Know About International Adoption

The international adoption process contains many parts including United States government clearance, agency clearance, foreign paperwork, child acceptance, travel, post-placement reporting and registration. International adoptions are full of changes, delays, paperwork, waiting and last minute requests. It can be an emotional roller coaster as families work with the agency and the governments to navigate through the complexities of the process.

IFS believes that educating and training its families will better equip and prepare them as they go through each phase of the adoption process. For this reason, IFS offers this family training program.

All Prospective Adoptive Parents and Family Hope Advocate Families working with IFS for adoption services are required to complete all available training. Some of these training materials (for example, Reality Check) are included in the IFS Service Fee. Other training (for example, With Eyes Wide Open) is offered by third party training providers. Families are responsible for any third party training costs.

IFS will accept substitute training only when documentation can be provided that the content was completed and covers the same material.

Prospective adoptive parents who have applied or will apply to U.S. Citizenship & Immigration Services after April 1, 2008, in order to adopt a child from a Hague Convention country (for example, India or China; see the U.S. Department of State Hague Overview for a list of Convention countries) are considered Convention cases and must complete the Hague Convention Adoption Training.

Prospective adoptive parents who have applied to U.S. Citizenship & Immigration Services before April 1, 2008, in order to adopt a child from a Hague Convention country (for example, India or China; see the U.S. Department of State Hague Overview for a list of Convention countries) are considered transitional cases and must complete the Non-Convention Adoption Training. NOTE: parents whose cases are transitional must not allow their CIS I-171h approval to expire; if the I-171h expires, their transitional status will be lost and they will have to comply with the Hague regulations as a Convention case.

Prospective adoptive parents who have applied to U.S. Citizenship & Immigration Services at any time in order to adopt a child from a country which is not party to Hague Convention (see the U.S. Department of State Hague Overview for a list of Convention countries) are considered non-Convention cases and must complete the Non-Convention Adoption Training.