Friday, December 16, 2016
Hope
With President Trump, Russia Might Drop Its Adoption Ban on American Families via The Moscow Times
Sunday, May 24, 2015
Growing Up in Pictures
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The Russian Federation maintains a database of children available for adoption that is occasionally updated with new photographs and, for many of the prospective adoptive parents also caught in the ban, the database photographs are the only remaining connection to the children they love and continue to think, and worry, about every day.
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June 1st, 2015 is International Children's Day. Please join Parents United for Russian Orphans this week in reminding the US government that parents are more important than politics and that there at least 30 children, whose prospective parents still desperately want to adopt them, waiting, and wondering, in Russian orphanages today.
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Saturday, March 21, 2015
Not Forgotten on World Down Syndrome Day 2015
Down Syndrome, also called Trisomy 21, occurs when a person is born with an extra, third, copy of the 21st chromosome. In Russia, approximately 2,500 children are born with Down Syndrome each year and 85% of them are placed in orphanages. Source.
At the time of the ban on US adoptions 20 children with Down Syndrome had met the American families who wanted to adopt them. 15 of these children remain in orphanages more than two years later despite intense efforts to find other placements for them.
"Children with Down syndrome [still] very rarely find a family in Russia," say experts from the charity fund "Volunteers to help orphans."... According to the coordinator [of the] foundation, Marina Andreeva, recently Russians began to take more in the family "difficult" children with intact intellect...but children who are diagnosed so-called mental illness, in Russia little chance." Source.
An even greater number of American families had begun the process to adopt Russian children with Down Syndrome, but had not yet traveled to meet their prospective sons and daughters. At least two of these children, who would have come home to the US in 2013, have since died in orphanages. Almost all of the rest continue to live out their days in institutional care.
3.21 has been designated World Down Syndrome Day and the theme for 2015 is "My Opportunities, My Choices." Today PURO remembers in particular those sunny* little ones whose opportunities and choices were suddenly and catastrophically limited by Federal Law of the Russian Federation no. 272-FZ. You are not forgotten, sweet children.
Please Like our FB page to help be a voice for these children.
*In Russian, children with Down Syndrome are sometimes referred to as солнечные дети or sun children.
Tuesday, March 10, 2015
"[The] bloody account is not in our favor."
According to the data of the Presidential Commissioner for Children's Rights Pavel Astakhov, at the time of 2010 in the United States since the early 1990s at the hands of American adoptive parents killed 19 children adopted in Russia. However, he noted that in Russia each year in foster care die an average of nine to 15 children - far more than in the US."If we compare the statistics for the dead children in Russia and America, of course, bloody account is not in our favor," said Astakhov. Source.
An analysis of the 2011 child welfare data for both Russia and the US likewise found that "mistreatment by adoptive parents is relatively low in Russia, and lower yet in the United States."
Sadly, the situation is worse for orphaned children with disabilities because very few of them will be adopted within Russia. A 2014 Human Rights Watch Report found "that many children and young people with disabilities who have lived in [Russian] orphanages suffered serious abuse and neglect on the part of institution staff...Some children interviewed by Human Rights Watch said that orphanage staff beat them, injected them with sedatives, and sent them to psychiatric hospitals for days or weeks at a time to control or punish them."
It is particularly disheartening that the ban on US adoptions was passed less than two months after a new bilateral agreement, which dramatically increased both pre-adoption training and post-adoption reporting, came into force and so those improvements were never tested. In addition, in the months following the ban, the group of parents who had met the Russian children they hoped to adopt, but who had not yet finalized the adoptions in court, proposed a plan to comply with the terms of the bilateral agreement and further grant the Russian Federation even greater oversight of adoptees in the US through scheduled consular visits and direct notification of child welfare cases involving Russian adoptees. But even these additional safeguards were rejected.
The safety and well-being of vulnerable children is a serious issue for all civilized societies, but it is one which nationalism has no place. International adoption is a distant third-best option for children who cannot be safely raised either by their birth families or by foster or adoptive families in their country of birth, but it is not in the best interest of these children to eliminate or drastically restrict this option until a better, safer placement is available for each child.
Sunday, February 22, 2015
Happy Birthday to Lucy
Reposting this blog post by Tanna who was adopting Lucy from Russia. Such a sad beautiful post to this sweet baby girl.
Happy birthday, baby girl. Today we will celebrate for the third year without you...our hearts will be heavy and our eyes will fill with tears when we least expect it.Birthdays and holidays are so hard.
We will sit around the table and look at the four candles on your cake and pray for your heart, health, safety, but most importantly your future. We will boldly ask God for a miracle because we don't know how to give up.
When you were carried through the director's door three years ago, you not only filled our arms but you took up permanent residence in our hearts
We surrendered your life to God and trusted that our traveling around the world to love you was not in vain. We have seen Him work in mighty ways in your life over the last three years. When your video and pictures were published several months ago we laughed, cried, and praised God for breathing life in to your baby house. The sedated, limp child we met was no more. Your eyes sparkled. You worked so hard to put one foot in front of the other and I believe you are probably walking by now. You knew how to reach for a toy and play with it appropriately. Simple things that most parents take for granted but we knew this was BIG! God showed the director and nannies that your life mattered and from your video, we can see that you have blossomed under the improved care.
Many changes are ahead for you this next month as you will leave behind the only home you have ever known. We believe the institution you will be transferred to will take care of your needs and we will continue to whisper prayers of protection. We will specifically pray that you will be in a room with your friend Adalyn and the transition will be easier because of that.
Who could ever imagine going from three to four candles could bring so much change in a child's life? Next year, we plan on celebrating your birthday with you. We trust that God has a plan for your future and we refuse to give up. Yes, we are stubborn. We will continue to hope that your future will include a mama and daddy, brothers and a sister.
We love you, sweetheart. When you sleep at night, I hope your dreams are filled with memories from our days together. I hope you feel us rocking you to sleep, kissing you over and over, and our gaze as we marveled at your absolutely perfect, angelic face. When we held you close, our hearts would beat together proving that blood does not make a family.You were instantly our baby girl.
I love you,... I will continue to pray for you,.... I will never give up.
Love, Mom
Saturday, December 20, 2014
Turn the World Upside Down with Downside Up
Parents United for Russian Orphans supports the mission of Downside Up.
That is why we have turned our profile picture upside down on our FB page.
DSU is running a fundraising campaign to raise money to help more families in Russia and other countries keep their children with Down syndrome instead of giving them up to orphanages.
Downside Up provides valuable resources these families desperately need.
Please consider turning the world upside down with them by turning your profile picture upside down and making a small donation to their cause.
http://downsideup.org/en/downsideup-about
Thursday, December 4, 2014
Sadomasochists Against Cannibals
This article was written in Russian by Julia Kolesnickenko on 3 December 2014. Julia was kind enough to translate the article into English for us to help get a better translation than what Google Translate provides. Remember to Like us on FB to keep up to date on what we are doing to help make things better for the children.
https://www.facebook.com/parentsunitedforrussianorphans
We are sadomasochists; at least, according to President Putin. Really, how else do you explain why, despite all the hopelessness, we do not forget about this subject?
On December 13th at 17:30 at the festival of documentary films "Artdokfest" the Russian premiere of the documentary "Children of the State" by Olga Arlauskas and Nikita Tikhonov-Rau will be shown. Our family unexpectedly became one of the main characters of this film. Why?
Two years have passed since Dima Yakovlev’s law was signed. Two years ago, my husband, journalist Alexander Kolesnichenko, while questioning President Putin at a press conference, called this law "cannibal" in a last attempt to attract the attention of the authorities and the public to what’s going on and in the desperate hope to change something.
It so happens that we already had been involved with our orphanage system before our officials decided to use children in their political games. We started with the most obvious: bringing gifts to the kids in the orphanages, collecting diapers, and corresponding with children in institutions. But we eventually realized the only thing that really works is adoption. No, I'm not trying to belittle the work of volunteers - their participation in the lives of children in state institutions is necessary, and sometimes even priceless. I;m afraid even this participation has some need for improvement - but let’s talk about this another time.
We are not heroes! We're just ordinary people, that we were able to only adopt one child from the system. That’s how we got our son and our daughter got a younger brother. That’s how we all became twice blessed. But, having learned from experience what our orphanage system looks like, we could not forget it. We had to help other children find their parents. In a few cases we succeeded - and, hopefully, will do it again.
Let me remind you that one of the vices of the Russian orphanage system is based on the fact that it’s not about finding the child suitable parents but parents searching for a certain type of child. After all, there are much less prospective adoptive parents than there are children. Which means you can choose: please, give me a young one, with no health problems, without bad heredity, without siblings, Slavic appearance, and the one that make my heart sink at the sight of them ... In my class for adoptive parents, for example, there was a lady who wanted only a young, healthy, blue-eyed girl. Unfortunately, most the children are not young blue-eyed girls but instead they are teenagers, children with serious illnesses and disabilities, brothers and sisters, who by law cannot usually be separated.
We know the amazing people in our country who take the most "difficult" children, literally saving their lives – I’d like to bow to them! But we also know that these people are very few ... Much less than children who urgently need help. There are few in our country and not many in others. But if we put this "few” and "not many" together the children have a chance! Also we should remember that foreign adoptive parents are more often ready to take orphans with disabilities simply because in their countries and societies they offer these children more opportunities.
We always believed that if you can’t do good thing yourself at least try to support someone who can. And certainly do not interfere! It seems for us that having hundred thousand orphans, most of whom have biological parents alive, knowing that every year this number is replenished by more than half; the government should raise the alarm. All efforts must be directed at the prevention of child abandonment, promoting the adoption should be heard from the TV and radio, and Mr. Astakhov and his colleagues should not sleep until the last orphanage is closed - or, at least, turned into a small family type home.
But no - we are reducing the number of orphanages only by uniting them. Instead of promoting adoption Ombudsman Astakhov is promoting only himself,repeating like a mantra the tale how we the queue of future adoption parents are growing. And politicians, wondering how to hurt the West more suddenly decide: look, we have orphans! We have almost as many of them as oil. And, oddly enough, these crazy foreign adoptive parents need them as much as oil. Let’s punish them - and we will not allow them to take our children anymore. And the whole subject will sound so urgent and patriotic: our children should live here!
Because of the adoption ban every year thousands of children lose their chance for a family. Some of those who two years ago could have had Moms and Dads, some are no longer alive. Some of them, fortunately, still got to go to families - in Russia or in the countries where it was still possible to adopt. But too many are still in orphanages and apart from their American parents, who are still trying to reach out to us with a desperate plea, "Please help these children grow up in a family - if not in our country, than in yours!" “Don’t let them be forgotten!"
I cannot explain how painful is to read the letters of these parents. When the pain becomes unbearable, I write another article, trying to tell you about Kolya, who was separated by this ban from his brother, about Lera, a little girl with Down syndrome, who has yet another birthday with no family this month, about Dima, who was promised to be cured by doctors in one of the best American clinic but instead is still crawling on his hands on the floor in orphanage in Tver region, about Dasha, Arina, another Dima, about two other brothers who not only lost parents due to the ban but each other when they were transferred last year to different orphanages, about Nicolose, ‘butterfly-boy”, who in a few months should be moved from the baby home to the orphanage that could mean death from sepsis to him.
I write because I do not know what else to do. Because it's the only thing I can do. Because at least one child from this list finally got a family. Because to keep silent about it is even harder than to tell. That’s why all of us, me, my husband and our children agreed to participate in the documentary of Olga and Nikita. Documentary film makers, in no way connected with the orphanage subjects, they also were shocked by the cynicism of the law and could not stay away. "This film is not political, - says Olga Arlauskas. - Making it, we didn’t take the side of either Russia or America or Europe. We have tried to take the place of children. And it was very scary.
We, by the way, we are also scared. It is one thing to let people who were unknown at first but became very close after in your home and in your soul and it's quite another thing to put everything very personal, and most importantly – our children in public. We are scared even now, because we have not even seenthe movie yet. And, although we trust the professionalism of the authors, we admit that we can have a different vision. And of course we feel we very uncomfortable - why us? We’re not heroes at all! But even scarier of all this is the thought that these children we’ll be forgotten. That everyone will believe that all foreign adoptive parents are monsters and that the orphan crisis is almost solved in our country and citizens do not need to worry about it. That the whole orphanage system aimed in self-reproduction, will continue to eat children, and we won’t do anything to stop it ...
However, the real heroes of this film, of course, are not us. They’re Katrina Morris, her husband Steven and their five children – three biological sons, adopted daughter from US Foster Care and Lera, forever locked because of the ban in Russia. Lera has Down syndrome. Children with this diagnosis in Russia are rarely adopted and quite often abandoned. Katrina and Steven had collected all the necessary documents and were waiting for a court date when they heard about the ban on Lera’s birthday. Now instead of being home with Mom, Dad, brothers, sister, friends,school, Disneyland down the street and a long happy life, Lera will face moving from an orphanage to mental institution for adults and then to a special nursing home - if she is still alive then. Katrina and Steven, like many other parents, still fight for Lera and for the rest of the children. That’s how we met. Katrina was the first of many American parents whom we knew in those first days of despair. Each of them longing to adopt children with disabilities in Russia...
And the last thing: as you may heard Mr. Medinsky (Russian culture minister) said that "festival "Artdokfest" will never get any money until I am minister of culture" because its organizer Mr. Mansky "pronounced so many anti-state things ." So everyone including the authors, the heroes and the media will have to buy tickets to watch this film on their own. Let it be at least some sign of support for the children, parents and the project itself ... And I hope to see you all on the 13th of December.
https://www.facebook.com/parentsunitedforrussianorphans
Sadomasochists Against Cannibals
We are sadomasochists; at least, according to President Putin. Really, how else do you explain why, despite all the hopelessness, we do not forget about this subject?
On December 13th at 17:30 at the festival of documentary films "Artdokfest" the Russian premiere of the documentary "Children of the State" by Olga Arlauskas and Nikita Tikhonov-Rau will be shown. Our family unexpectedly became one of the main characters of this film. Why?
Two years have passed since Dima Yakovlev’s law was signed. Two years ago, my husband, journalist Alexander Kolesnichenko, while questioning President Putin at a press conference, called this law "cannibal" in a last attempt to attract the attention of the authorities and the public to what’s going on and in the desperate hope to change something.
It so happens that we already had been involved with our orphanage system before our officials decided to use children in their political games. We started with the most obvious: bringing gifts to the kids in the orphanages, collecting diapers, and corresponding with children in institutions. But we eventually realized the only thing that really works is adoption. No, I'm not trying to belittle the work of volunteers - their participation in the lives of children in state institutions is necessary, and sometimes even priceless. I;m afraid even this participation has some need for improvement - but let’s talk about this another time.
We are not heroes! We're just ordinary people, that we were able to only adopt one child from the system. That’s how we got our son and our daughter got a younger brother. That’s how we all became twice blessed. But, having learned from experience what our orphanage system looks like, we could not forget it. We had to help other children find their parents. In a few cases we succeeded - and, hopefully, will do it again.
Let me remind you that one of the vices of the Russian orphanage system is based on the fact that it’s not about finding the child suitable parents but parents searching for a certain type of child. After all, there are much less prospective adoptive parents than there are children. Which means you can choose: please, give me a young one, with no health problems, without bad heredity, without siblings, Slavic appearance, and the one that make my heart sink at the sight of them ... In my class for adoptive parents, for example, there was a lady who wanted only a young, healthy, blue-eyed girl. Unfortunately, most the children are not young blue-eyed girls but instead they are teenagers, children with serious illnesses and disabilities, brothers and sisters, who by law cannot usually be separated.
We know the amazing people in our country who take the most "difficult" children, literally saving their lives – I’d like to bow to them! But we also know that these people are very few ... Much less than children who urgently need help. There are few in our country and not many in others. But if we put this "few” and "not many" together the children have a chance! Also we should remember that foreign adoptive parents are more often ready to take orphans with disabilities simply because in their countries and societies they offer these children more opportunities.
We always believed that if you can’t do good thing yourself at least try to support someone who can. And certainly do not interfere! It seems for us that having hundred thousand orphans, most of whom have biological parents alive, knowing that every year this number is replenished by more than half; the government should raise the alarm. All efforts must be directed at the prevention of child abandonment, promoting the adoption should be heard from the TV and radio, and Mr. Astakhov and his colleagues should not sleep until the last orphanage is closed - or, at least, turned into a small family type home.
But no - we are reducing the number of orphanages only by uniting them. Instead of promoting adoption Ombudsman Astakhov is promoting only himself,repeating like a mantra the tale how we the queue of future adoption parents are growing. And politicians, wondering how to hurt the West more suddenly decide: look, we have orphans! We have almost as many of them as oil. And, oddly enough, these crazy foreign adoptive parents need them as much as oil. Let’s punish them - and we will not allow them to take our children anymore. And the whole subject will sound so urgent and patriotic: our children should live here!
Because of the adoption ban every year thousands of children lose their chance for a family. Some of those who two years ago could have had Moms and Dads, some are no longer alive. Some of them, fortunately, still got to go to families - in Russia or in the countries where it was still possible to adopt. But too many are still in orphanages and apart from their American parents, who are still trying to reach out to us with a desperate plea, "Please help these children grow up in a family - if not in our country, than in yours!" “Don’t let them be forgotten!"
I cannot explain how painful is to read the letters of these parents. When the pain becomes unbearable, I write another article, trying to tell you about Kolya, who was separated by this ban from his brother, about Lera, a little girl with Down syndrome, who has yet another birthday with no family this month, about Dima, who was promised to be cured by doctors in one of the best American clinic but instead is still crawling on his hands on the floor in orphanage in Tver region, about Dasha, Arina, another Dima, about two other brothers who not only lost parents due to the ban but each other when they were transferred last year to different orphanages, about Nicolose, ‘butterfly-boy”, who in a few months should be moved from the baby home to the orphanage that could mean death from sepsis to him.
I write because I do not know what else to do. Because it's the only thing I can do. Because at least one child from this list finally got a family. Because to keep silent about it is even harder than to tell. That’s why all of us, me, my husband and our children agreed to participate in the documentary of Olga and Nikita. Documentary film makers, in no way connected with the orphanage subjects, they also were shocked by the cynicism of the law and could not stay away. "This film is not political, - says Olga Arlauskas. - Making it, we didn’t take the side of either Russia or America or Europe. We have tried to take the place of children. And it was very scary.
We, by the way, we are also scared. It is one thing to let people who were unknown at first but became very close after in your home and in your soul and it's quite another thing to put everything very personal, and most importantly – our children in public. We are scared even now, because we have not even seenthe movie yet. And, although we trust the professionalism of the authors, we admit that we can have a different vision. And of course we feel we very uncomfortable - why us? We’re not heroes at all! But even scarier of all this is the thought that these children we’ll be forgotten. That everyone will believe that all foreign adoptive parents are monsters and that the orphan crisis is almost solved in our country and citizens do not need to worry about it. That the whole orphanage system aimed in self-reproduction, will continue to eat children, and we won’t do anything to stop it ...
However, the real heroes of this film, of course, are not us. They’re Katrina Morris, her husband Steven and their five children – three biological sons, adopted daughter from US Foster Care and Lera, forever locked because of the ban in Russia. Lera has Down syndrome. Children with this diagnosis in Russia are rarely adopted and quite often abandoned. Katrina and Steven had collected all the necessary documents and were waiting for a court date when they heard about the ban on Lera’s birthday. Now instead of being home with Mom, Dad, brothers, sister, friends,school, Disneyland down the street and a long happy life, Lera will face moving from an orphanage to mental institution for adults and then to a special nursing home - if she is still alive then. Katrina and Steven, like many other parents, still fight for Lera and for the rest of the children. That’s how we met. Katrina was the first of many American parents whom we knew in those first days of despair. Each of them longing to adopt children with disabilities in Russia...
And the last thing: as you may heard Mr. Medinsky (Russian culture minister) said that "festival "Artdokfest" will never get any money until I am minister of culture" because its organizer Mr. Mansky "pronounced so many anti-state things ." So everyone including the authors, the heroes and the media will have to buy tickets to watch this film on their own. Let it be at least some sign of support for the children, parents and the project itself ... And I hope to see you all on the 13th of December.
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