Increasing the incentives
- Hoosiers face challenges adopting abroad
- Rules are changing; programs are closing.
- 16 on trial in Vietnam adoption scandal
- Adopting new standards on adoption
- Adoption group is under shadow
- Adoption scandal has prompted only minor changes
- Agency Blamed for Pakistan Adoption Failure
- Ambassador post blocked as US adoptive families fight for release of Vietnamese orphans
- Babies just another commodity
- Baby trafficking and other adoption secrets
I read yet another article about the ways in which adoption agencies work WITH certain companies/business to help assist Americans interested in international adoption.
When Deanna S. Kellogg made the decision with her husband, David, to go through an international adoption, their adoption agency suggested looking into benefits offered through the companies they worked for. [From "Firms step up the adoption time", Casey Farrar, June 27, 2009, http://sentinelsource.com/articles/2009/06/27/business/news/free/id_361416.txt ]
Since her company did NOT offer adoption incentives, she wrote a letter to her newly-employed vice-president, and six months later an adoption benefit for employees was created. The benefit offers $10,000 to help with adoption costs, AND includes up to two weeks of paid vacation after the adoption.
Later in the article, the adoptive mother of one, (who is on the waiting-list for another child from S. Korea) states:
But without the company program, they probably wouldn’t have decided to adopt again.
“It would have wiped us out, financially,” Kellogg said.
To which, regional manager of Wide Horizons for Children, the largest private, nonprofit adoption agency in New England responds:
“What we are seeing is a significant increase in families who are very educated about whether their employer has adoption benefits and any subsidy or grant money available to for adoption even before they call us. ...” Drotos said. “Families are clearly doing their research, using the Internet, talking to friends, talking to other adoptive families, early on in the adoption process to try to make this work for them.”
Of course many of us know working for a non-profit does not mean there is no salary... and many of us know with each adoption from an orphanage, the orphan-keepers are paid a mandatory donation.... money children rarely see because it's paying management salaries.
Is it any wonder why adoption agencies in the United States encourage PAP's to ask their employers/company owners for adoption assistance? How else will the people working for the international child-market get their perks and salaries?
Just how long will it take for people to see adoption drives and incentives feed into the whole supply/demand side of the adoption coin, making children in certain countries easy prey for those heavily involved in child trafficking schemes?