Niels's blog

Tonight, December 5th, he will ride the roof tops of many houses on his white horse, assisted by his Black Petes to bring gifts to children. I am talking of Sinterklaas, of course.

Long time ago, Mimi had a vision of a world in which no-one should remain childless and no child would have to live without a family. Mimi had seen the sadness in the eyes of those that desperately wanted children but couldn't get them and Mimi had seen images of children in poor countries that had no father or mother, children that were poorly fed and hardly had school to attend. Mimi felt she was called to solve both issues with one single plan.

Infamous adoption agency A Child's Waiting no longer seems in business, other that that it seems business as usual.

In August last year, Crissy Kolaric, her husband Todd Kolarik and her sister Jennifer Marando struck a deal with the authorities in Ohio, after a series of violations of the Ohio Administrative code.

The deal stated:

The "entire" adoption community is fumed, offended, enraged, vexed, saddened, distressed, troubled, concerned. The reason for this, a Hollywood production by the name of Orphan.

One of the major topics in the process of adoption is the waiting time. Several agencies give prognoses of waiting times for several source countries on their websites. In blogs and on forums, adoptive parents discuss the waiting times they have experienced or are experiencing. Waiting times make people "go international", because the domestic waiting lists are too long.

Last night I read Cycle of Failure: HOW MICHIGAN KEEPS “THROWING THE FIGHT” FOR CHILDREN – AND HOW TO MAKE THE STATE A CONTENDER AGAIN, a report written by the National Coalition for Child Protection Reform (NCCPR) about the foster care system in Michigan.

Today James Marsh wrote an interesting article on his blog called Corrupting International Adoption, related to the use of bribes in intercountry adoption and its relation to Foreign Corrupt Practices Act [FCPA].

Today I learned about yet another child who died at the hands of an adoptive parent. Since we started the abuse cases section we found out about 198 children that died because of abuse or neglect while being placed out (70 of which in foster care and 128 adopted).

Last Sunday a boy by the name of Kevin Michael King died in Bakersfield, California at the hands of his adoptive mother from blunt force to the chest and abdomen.

The US department of Health and Human Service, Administration for Children and Families maintains statistics about foster care. While browsing through their site, I came across the number of children in foster care on the last day of year (September 30). Although the data is from FY2002 to FY2006 it's still interesting to see what states are doing well in reducing the number of children in foster care and what states are not.

I decided to take the average of the annual growth for these years and created the following map.

The other day I heard of one of my contacts that an adoption lobbyist, familiar with some work I've been involved in, is trying to dismiss that work on the grounds that I am supposedly anti-adoption. The work, which is a well documented exposé of child trafficking cases, in the minds of the adoption lobby seems to lose value, once the anti-adoption label can be assigned. Corruption and illegal practices simply cease to exist, once the documentation of those activities is perfomed or supported by someone whom the anti-adoption label can be applied to.