Not much proper guidance

Almost ready to send our complete appeal now, our agency’s director gave me permission to contact another family who’d successfully appealed a denial in the past. The summer hosting program only knew of two past denials. Both families traveled to Colombia to appeal, only one went home with a child. We had a fifty-fifty chance.

After talking with the family, I felt a renewed sense of hope.  “Yes, your situation seems similar to our experience. They didn’t like several things they read in our psychological evaluation either. I would not accept their denial, though. I just couldn’t. Once the committee met us in person, they realized we were good people, very committed to the adoption. They let us keep our daughter in our custody for the full seven weeks we stayed in Colombia to then complete the adoption. Don’t worry. I think your situation will turn out fine, as well.”

However, they didn’t go through near as much trouble to build and present their appeal. They said their caseworker simply requested a date for them to meet with the committee and had them collect a few extra documents. They didn’t authenticate anything, nor did they even mail anything to Colombia. They took the documents with them in hand only a few short weeks later.

Ugh! If we used the same agency, why did the director tell me to collect and authenticate all this stuff to send first before even requesting a date for us to go down there? The next morning, I called the director to ask her myself.

“Well, I think it might give you a better chance if the committee can look over everything before they meet you. Once we send it all to Colombia, I will arrange a date for you to go.” I’ll always wonder if putting more energy into trying to get down there rather than in sending more papers would have led to a different outcome.

In fact, our agency really floundered once we had everything ready to put in the mail. “Send it all straight to Colombia to the Head of Adoptions.”

http://www.icbf.gov.co/portal/page/portal/PortalICBF/Bienestar/ProgramaAdopciones

A few hours later, “No, we think it’s better to send it to our agency representative in Colombia so she can look it over and then advocate better for you.”

Yet still within the same day, “Wait. Send it all to us first so we can add a cover letter and send it to Colombia for you. It will get more priority coming directly from an agency.”

 We sent everything straight to her the following day.