Home --» Useful information--» Criteria of the Intercountry Adoption Council for prospective adoptive parents applying to adopt a child, registered at the Ministry of Justice - 2008

General eligibility criteria of the Intercountry Adoption Council for prospective adoptive parents applying to adopt a child, registered at the Ministry of Justice

On 8 January 2008 the third session of the Intercountry Adoption Council with the new members was held (73^rd consecutive session). The representative of the Ministry of Education and Science was not present.

The Council reviewed the dossier of 12 children with consecutive number in the register and 11 of them were matched with appropriate parents from the register. For one of the children no appropriate parents were found because of the child’s health condition of hydrocephalus The Council decided to publish the information about this child on the list of special needs children on the web site of the Ministry of Justice.

The Council also accepted six main guiding criteria for matching adoptive parents with children.

As it was announced earlier, on the first Session of the Council held in December 2007, the Council approved the proposal of the Bulgarian accredited organizations for accepting few main criteria for the matching process.

The adoption organizations proposed six main guiding criteria for the Council:

1. Registration number of the prospective adoptive parent (s);

2. Is the adoption approval current;

3. Does the adoptive parent (s) meet the requirement of the Bulgarian adoption law;

4. What are the specifics of the adoption approval;

5. What is the desire expressed by the adoptive parents regarding the child and the adoption The Council decided that a sixth criterion shall be added:

6. Protection of the best interest of the child

The six criteria were agreed upon with the accredited organizations. Their comments and responses were discussed by the Council. The majority of the organizations support the six criteria that were jointly agreed upon.

On the session held on 8 January 2008, the Council adopted the six main criteria to follow in its work. According to the criteria adopted, the Council will apply the principle of consecutiveness of the prospective adoptive parents in reviewing their applications. The Council decided during each session to review the first 50 consecutive active applications of registered adoptive parents The Council will take into consideration each individual case given that criteria 2 and 3 are fulfilled and will analyze carefully criteria 4 and 5 for each individual applicant.

The work of the Council will be guided by criterion 6. In cases when the adoptive parents meet criteria 2, 3, 4 and 5, the Council will give priority to adoptive parents with earlier registration date given that this is in the best interest of the child.

The Council will make exceptions to the principle of consecutiveness whenever there are cases of children with special needs or older children. The Council will prioritize their procedures because of their lesser chance of finding adoptive families.

The Council will make other exceptions to the principle of consecutiveness in cases of children, whose sibling(s) has already been adopted by adoptive parent (s) registered with the Ministry of Justice. Applications of such adoptive parent (s) will be given priority and the registration date will be irrelevant.