Riekie van der Berg, director of SA Cares for Life, explained the complicated process of inter-country adoptions.

April 28 2002 at 09:14PM

Riekie van der Berg, director of SA Cares for Life, explained the complicated process of inter-country adoptions.

"We don't advertise at all. Instead, we have working agreements with Sweden, Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium.

Sweden, for instance, has ratified the Hague Convention and we have a signed working agreement with their central adoption agency.

They screen families, a process that takes between six months and a year, and they send their profiles to us. Families are screened for a specific country, and the first time we see them is when they come to South Africa to fetch the child after the adoption has been approved on that side.

We are a Christian organisation and our requirements - different to those of Johannesburg Child Welfare, for example - are that the adoptive parents are born-again Christians with strong marriages. We don't accept single or homosexual parents.

Sweden looks at our requirements and they select two or three profiles at a time.

When we have a baby who has been in our system for three weeks and we can't find a South African family, the baby goes over to the inter-country placement committee.

They look at the background of the baby, and he or she is matched with one of the profiles from Sweden.

If we identify a family that fits the baby, we contact Sweden and send a study over. If the family accept the baby, the agency contacts us and tells us when the family will be arriving. We then go to court with home-study reports, and the adoption is finalised.

The family often stay here for about a week and go on cultural tours to find out about the baby's history.

They would also buy books and make videos to take back home."