The Joint Council on International Children’s Services (JCICS) held a summit last week to discuss the current state and future of adoptions in Viet Nam. Representatives from adoption agencies, JCICS, the Department of State, Department of Homeland Security and USCIS (US Citizenship and Immigration Services) were in attendance. I blogged a bit about the response we got from our agency here, and now the JCICS has posted a summary of the summit on their website for the public to view.

The summit was a forum to discuss the current state of adoptions in Viet Nam, and the result was a newly created standard of practices for adoption agencies to follow. The JCICS is currently working on this agreement that will be signed on December 31st and implemented by June of 2008. They state that

“These Standards of Practice must be based on the best interest of the child, transparency of process and fee, and the accountability of governments, adoptive parents and service providers.”

I’m really glad to see parents be put in the an accountability category; we all have a responsibility to ensure that the people with whom we choose to work to adopt our children are ethical and working in the best interest of the children.

In the summary I learned that there have been over twenty NOIDS (Notice of Intent to Deny) issued. I didn’t realize that the number was that high and am shocked by it. These NOIDS were discussed and the point was raised that NOIDS may still be issued in the future, but with the new I600 submission procedure, they would be issued prior to travel.

The current bilateral agreement between the United States and Viet Nam (the Memorandum of Understanding) was also discussed. There is concern regarding the fact that the MOU will be up for renewal in March, and many parts of the agreement have not been fulfilled. Viet Nam has still not released a fee schedule, and that is a major component of the MOU. There is no way to know what will happen when March rolls around, but I am glad that issues are being discussed and it seems as if there are a good number of parties involved in Viet Nam-US adoptions who are working for the good of the children and hope to see Viet Nam remain open for US adoptions.

32 adoption agencies were represented at the summit and there are currently 42 licensed agencies. Hmmmm….I wonder which ones weren’t present and why on Earth they weren’t there.