THE RUSSIAN consulate has said it has received 15 of the 70 outstanding post-placement reports in the past few days from the Irish parents of children adopted in Russia.
It has also advised prospective adoptive parents to continue to engage with the consulate, despite the uncertainty prompted by Moscow’s decision last week to place more than half of all HSE areas on a new adoption blacklist.
Russia requires all parents who adopt Russian children to send post-placement reports to the authorities to monitor their welfare and integration into the family. It has recently tightened its monitoring following the deaths of several children adopted internationally.
Following the failure of about 70 Irish parents of children from Russia to provide the reports, the Russian ministry of education and science placed 18 of the 32 HSE local area health offices on its new blacklist last week. This has led some Russian regional authorities to block adoption referrals from several Irish couples and created huge uncertainty for hundreds of couples in the process of adopting Russian children.
The Russian embassy said yesterday it had received 15 of the 70 outstanding reports following news reports about the blacklist last week. It also advised prospective parents to continue to engage with the Russian consulate, although it cannot rule out problems emerging when these couples have to engage with the authorities in Russia.
“The Russian consulate is happy to advise that it has commenced receiving outstanding post-placement reports done, and we strongly advise this trend continue. We thank adoptive parents for understanding and co-operation in resolving the issue with the outstanding reports,” said the consulate in a statement.
Minister for Children Barry Andrews called on parents who have adopted children from Russia this week to provide reports on their welfare to Moscow to remove the health boards from the adoption blacklist.
However, he has insisted that the Government is powerless to compel the Irish parents of adopted children to send post-placement reports to the Russian authorities to help lift the current block on adoptions.
Russia is the most popular country for Irish couples seeking inter-country adoptions, following the Government’s decision to suspend adoptions from Vietnam in January. Some 1,229 children adopted in Russia have been registered on the Adoption Board’s register of foreign adoptions since 1991.