After children arrive home with their adoptive families, a series of post-placement reports must be completed to meet both agency, state and sending country requirements.
Haiti’s Post-Placement Requirements
Haiti’s new post-placement guidelines require agency reports to be completed at 1 month, 6 months, 12 months, 18 months and 24 months after the child arrives. Following that they require self-reports from the family until the child turns 18.
Additional Required Reports
The Haitian Government is also requiring a medical report, a report card (something from the child’s school) and a psychological assessment (on the child) to be completed and accompany every agency generated post-placement report.
We don’t know of any other country requiring separate medical, school and psychosocial reports to accompany children’s post-placement reports. These reports, along with the additional agency reports required for up to 24 months, translates into extra time and expense on the part of the adoptive parents to comply. We hope that over time a concerted joint effort and advocacy on the part of adoption agencies will convince the Haitian Government to change these new requirements to eliminate these 3 extra reports from their post-placement guidelines. However, until then, these new requirements must be complied with.
Photo Page Requirements
Families must mount (w/clear tape) 8 different photographs to our photo page template. (Printed color glossy photos ONLY). They can give photo pages to you at the time of the home visit, or mail the photo pages directly to Holt’s main office in Eugene. It is important that all photos used fit the guidelines below. Since these photographs will be going to the Haitian government, we want to remain culturally sensitive.
Appropriate Types of Photos to Submit
- Please include a variety of photos with family (or friends), not just photos of your child alone.
- Please choose photographs that highlight your child and the family enjoying his/her company.
- We suggest that the photos show your child happy and appropriately dressed (i.e. warmly dressed if the environment looks cold, etc.)
- Important: Photos should be good quality and large enough to see child well (see template)
Types of Photos to Avoid
- Photos with costumes or pets
- Photos with bathing suits, swim shorts, bath time, or of the child topless or bare bodied at all.
- Photos with food all over their face. (i.e. the typical American spaghetti, birthday cake pictures)
Sibling/Twin Post Placement Reports
Only one written report is necessary as long as it addresses each child individually. Separate photo page sets are required for each child. (i.e. 2 kids = 8 photo pages with 2 photos, per child, for a total of 16 photos.)