April 1, 2016 – Alexandria, VA – The U.S. Department of State has released its FY 2015 Annual Report on Intercountry Adoption,
revealing that American families adopted 5,648 foreign-born children in
2015. This marks a 12% decline from the 6,441 foreign-born children
adopted the previous year and a 75% decline since intercountry adoptions
reached a peak in 2004, when 22,991 foreign-born children were adopted.
This is the lowest number of intercountry adoptions since 1981.
Did you adopt a child in 2014 or 2015? If so, please share the cost and timing of your adoption by taking our survey. Start off this National Adoption Awareness Month by providing prospective adoptive families with up-to-date information.
Each year, Adoptive Families polls readers to get the real story on the average cost and length of time it takes to complete an adoption. We frequently hear from families just starting out in adoption that the final survey results are immensely helpful to them. See results from previous years >
We’re pleased to once again offer a special giveaway to encourage more families to share their adoption experiences. If more than 1,000 parents who adopted in 2014 or 2015 complete this year’s survey, we will randomly select one participant and donate $250 to the adoption organization of his or her choice!
Each year, Adoptive Families polls readers to get the real story on the average cost and length of time it takes to complete an adoption. We frequently hear from families just starting out in adoption that our Adoption Cost Breakdowns, based on the final survey results, are immensely helpful to them.
We’re pleased to once again offer a special giveaway to encourage more families to share their adoption experiences. If more than 1,000 parents who adopted in 2013 or 2014 complete this year’s survey, we will randomly select one participant and donate $250 to the adoption organization of his or her choice!
UPDATE: We are so close to our goal of 1,000 completed surveys—we need just 119 more parents to participate! Please take the survey today if you adopted in 2013 or 2014, and forward to any other families you know who did.
Transracial Adoptionwith Beth Hall
January 13, 2015 @ 1 pm EST
How can you and your family prepare to become parents and relatives to a child of a different race? How do you talk about race and adoption as your child grows? How do you talk about racism and your child's safety in a world that will see and make presumptions based on his or her skin color? If you adopted internationally, how do you balance and integrate birth culture exploration with discussion about your child’s everyday life as a hyphenated American? Beth Hall, co-author of Inside Transracial Adoption and founder of Pact, An Adoption Alliance, leads a discussion about parenting a child adopted transracially. Join us to ask your questions!
The Expert Q&A Webinar with Beth Hall: Transracial Adoption will take place on Tuesday, January 13, 2015 from 1pm to 2pm ET (12pm-1pm CT; 11am-12pm MT; 10am-11am PT).
Don't want to forget your question? Submit it in advance by posting a comment.
Can't attend the webinar? We'll post a recording here after the session.
Recordings are available FREE to Adoptive Families members. Non-members may purchase individual recordings, or join the site for full access and members' benefits.
Dear New York Adoptive Parents and Adoption Professionals,
New York State Citizens' Coalition for Children just posted an update:
Need you to call -Federal funding for post adoption services in jeopardy
New York State Citizens' Coalition for Children
Jul 31, 2014
HR 4980—Important Child Welfare Legislation which would fund post adoption services is in jeopardy because of Senator Coburn thinks it is too expensive and unneeded. We need as...
This message was sent by New York State Citizens' Coalition for Children using the Change.org system. Change.org does not endorse the contents of this message.
TUESDAY; April 1; 7:00 PM CT
If you are thinking about or planning a trip to your child's birth country, there is more to consider than travel.
Learn from adopted people and adoptive parents who have taken that trip. Along with practical advice, they will share their personal experiences and feelings to help you understand the lasting impact a homeland tour may have on your child.
Our panel will discuss:
Questions?
Email Mandi and Shane >
Co-sponsors
Join the discussion
Source: http://www.today.com/moms/all-love-we-have-dutch-couple-adopts-baby-us-8C11547242
Many Americans are unaware that children are adopted to families out side of the US. What are your thoughts?
Video: Watch as a Dutch parents Priscilla and Richard, who have already adopted a boy from the states, meet their new daughter, also born in America, live on TODAY.
International adoption is common in the United States, although parents in other countries are just as eager to adopt.
Meet Priscilla Devries and Richard Dros, who live in the Netherlands and wanted to have biological kids, “but it was medically not meant to be,” they said.
So they turned to adoption, but finding a child born in their native country is virtually impossible, as only one or two babies are put up for adoption each year, the couple said. Next stop: the United States, where a woman who gave birth to a girl last month chose the couple to be the baby’s parents.
Read more
Register now for next week's FREE expert Q&A webcast
Expert Q&A: Talking About Adoption with Children
with Joni S. Mantell, LCSW
October 17, 2013 @ 1 pm EDT
From getting comfortable with adoption language even before your child can understand, to first talks with curious preschoolers, to the probing questions of middle childhood, to honest, in-depth conversations with your preteen or teenager, adoption therapist Joni Mantell, LCSW, offers an overview of children's developmental understanding of adoption and answers parents' questions about talking about adoption with their kids. The Expert Q&A Webcast: Talking About Adoption with Children will take place on Thursday, October 17, 2013 from 1pm to 2pm EDT (12pm-1pm CDT; 11am-12pm MDT; 10am-11am PDT).
Don't want to forget your question? Submit it in advance here.
Can't attend the webcast? We'll post a recording here after the session.
Source: Caring for Your School-Age Child: Ages 5 to 12 (Copyright © 2004 American Academy of Pediatrics)
Recognizing Differences
You also have recognized that your youngster is not like you in some ways—that is, her eyes may be a different color, her race may not be the same as yours, and her temperament might be different. She might be outgoing and you might be quiet and reserved; you might be more intellectual, while she might be more athletic and physical. Of course, these latter differences are ones that occur in all families, but they may have special meaning for adoptive parents and their children.
If You Adopted An Older Child
If you did not adopt your child at infancy but rather during the preschool or elementary-school years, her upbringing before you became part of her life could present some problems.
Outlook
No matter what the reasons for and circumstances of the adoption, most of these children are well-adjusted and happy. Nevertheless, adoptive families often feel different and sometimes socially isolated. Indeed, these differences are real, and there are issues unique to the adoptive family that need to be acknowledged and addressed. Like most adoptive families, your own family can learn to deal with them well.
Another day, another headache for the Internal Revenue Service.
This time, the federal agency is being accused of mishandling the tax returns of adoptive families.
A report from the IRS's Taxpayer Advocate Service says that 90% of families who claimed the adoption tax credit during the 2012 filing season had their returns flagged for further review. Nearly 70%t had at least a partial audit of their tax return.
But the majority of the cases where the tax credit was audited — more than 35,000 returns in all — resulted in no changes.
The Taxpayer Advocate report says the IRS's handling of the adoption tax credit was a essentially a nightmare.
"The IRS's misguided procedures, and its failure to adequately adjust these processes when it learned its approach was seriously flawed, have caused significant economic harm to thousands of families who are selflessly trying to improve the lives of vulnerable children," said the report.
Among those families are Jake and Elfie Dotson of Clarksville. They've been dealing with the IRS for more than a year, trying to finalize their 2011 tax return.
Jake Doston is expecting a refund of several thousand dollars, which will help offset the $11,000 in fees they paid for the adoption. He says that because the IRS hasn't approved the tax credit, the agency claims the Dotsons still owe taxes.
"The IRS is telling me that I owe them money they haven't paid me, plus interest and penalties," he said.
The problem with the tax returns started in 2010, with the passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, often known as "Obamacare."
That law changed the way the IRS handled the tax credit for adoptions. It raised the maximum credit to $13,170 per child and made the credit refundable and retroactive. That meant the credit could could boost a family's tax refund by thousands of dollars.
In the past, many families had not qualified for the full credit. But the new rules made more families eligible for larger refunds, said Becky Wilmoth, a registered tax return preparer for Bills Tax Service of Centralia, Ill.
"A lot of people were able to go back and amend their returns from past years," said Wilmoth, who specializes in returns for adoptive families.
The new rules meant the total amount of money refunded jumped fourfold.
For the 2009 tax year, 81,430 taxpayers claimed the adoption tax credit, for a total of $280.6 million. For 2010, 110,591 taxpayers claimed $1.2 billion in credits. In 2011, 51,539 taxpayers claimed $668.1 million in credits.
"I don't think they knew there were that many adoptive families out there," said Wilmoth.
Wilmoth said most families who had trouble with the IRS didn't get a full-blown audit, including interviews with IRS agents. Instead, they got a review of the paperwork for their adoption tax credit. That still causes a lot of anxiety, she said.
But most families eventually got their tax refunds, with interest. According to the IRS report, the median refund for the adoption tax credit was more than $15,000.
"Yes, they had to wait," Wilmoth said. "But you are also talking about a lot of money."
An IRS spokeswoman said that in the past, other refundable tax credits had led to fraud. So the agency was trying to prevent that from occurring with the adoption credit.
"The IRS implemented the adoption credit program with an approach that balanced the objective of paying legitimate credits in a timely manner with that of ensuring that claims were accurate," Michelle L. Eldridge, chief of National IRS Media Relations in a statement.
"Our experiences and lessons learned from other refundable credits taught us that high dollar credits have high risk and the potential for fraud. We must ensure delivery of the credit to those entitled while protecting the government's interest in minimizing exposure to fraud."
News of the adoption audits fueled more online criticism of the IRS. The agency already is under fire after it apologized for targeting Tea Party groups and pro-life groups that had applied for tax exemptions. There does not seem to be any political motive behind the adoption credit audits.
Chuck Johnson, president and CEO of the National Council for Adoption, said he thinks the amount of money involved in the refunds was the issue. He also thinks there were fears that some people might misuse the credit.
That didn't prove to be the case. The IRS disallowed less than 2 percent of the total tax credits claimed, according to the Tax Advocate Service report.
"The good news is that the kind of people who adopt children don't try to cheat on their taxes," said Johnson.
Holly Spann, the Tennessee representative for the American Adoption Congress, said in an email that she was disappointed to see that "such a large number of adoptive parents are going through so much unwarranted analysis by the IRS and having their refunds short-changed...."
Adoptive families who had their tax refunds delayed said that complying with the IRS's requirements was complicated.
David French of Columbia, Tenn., a blogger and lawyer for the American Center for Law and Justice, said that he and his wife, Nancy, filed for the adoption credit in 2011, after adopting their daughter from Ethiopia. Over the summer, they received a letter from the IRS requesting more paperwork, including receipts for their expenses.
They were able to send copies of the receipts for their plane tickets as well as the fees they paid to their adoption agency. But most of their expenses while traveling in Africa were paid in cash.
"Even your hotel doesn't take a credit card in Ethiopia," he said.
Families who adopt from overseas often run up tens of thousands of dollars in debt to pay for the adoption. Getting the tax credit can make it easier for middle-class families to adopt, said French. The median income for taxpayers who got the adoption credit was $64,000.
The adoption tax credit is no longer refundable, which has made it easier for taxpayers who claimed the credit for 2012. Wilmoth said only two of her clients have had their credits reviewed this year.
That may change if the credit becomes refundable in the future. Senators Bob Casey, D-Pa., and Mary Landrieu, D-La., along with Rep. Bruce Braley, D-Iowa, introduced the Adoption Tax Credit Refundability Act of 2013 on Thursday, to make that happen.
Jake Dotson said he'd just like to see his troubles with the IRS be over. He said most people already have a negative view of the agency, because no one likes to pay taxes. The recent controversies have made things worse.
"Nobody trusts them," he said.
Smietana also reports for The Tennessean in Nashville.
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