Last Wednesday the Joint Council on International Children’s Services (JCICS) held a summit to discuss the current and future state of adoptions in Viet Nam. Representatives from several U.S. government offices met with representatives from adoption agencies working in Viet Nam to try and come up with a plan to ensure that adoptions from Viet Nam continue and are done in an ethical manner.

If you are a prospective adoptive parent (PAP,) you have probably already heard from your agency. If you haven’t, you may wish to contact them and get their opinions on how the day went and the topics that were covered. I was extremely pleased to wake up the next day and find an email in my inbox from Asian Children Services going over the summit and all that happened that day.

The bottom line is that as a result of the summit, the JCICS will be issuing a Statement of Practice for all adoption agencies to follow. It will be a set of guidelines and best practices that the agencies were asked to commit to. Our agency doubts that they will see much (if any) changes to the way they already operate, due to the fact that they already operate in the way in which the JCICS Statement will dictate.

The Memorandum of Understanding was discussed, as it is due to expire in March of this upcoming year if an extension is not signed by the U.S. and Viet Nam. Our agency made it very clear that this would not necessarily mean that adoptions would stop, but changes would be likely.

I will continue to check the JCICS website for updates and will post when more information is available. Again, if you have concerns about the Summit or Viet Nam adoption as a whole, talk to your agency-you have every right to have your questions answered.

***We’ve had an email problem with our server recently that has erased my entire inbox as well as address book. If you have emailed me in the past few weeks and have not received a response, please resend as I likely did not get the original email. Thank you!***