Waiting Children
Who are the waiting children?
Waiting children are the children that are registered for intercountry adoptions and for whom there are no prospective adoptive parents registered at the Ministry of Justice. Usually the waiting children are:
*Older children: Children that have not been adopted at younger age due to various reasons, such as legal difficulties, lack of suitable family and others. These are children above the age of 8.
*Sibling groups: Bulgaria tries to keep sibling groups together. Finding families who have the resources to adopt few children at a time is more difficult and takes time.
*Children with medical problem or family history: Many children placed in institutions have medical problems or developmental challenges or have a history of family illnesses. Some conditions can be treated and allow the child to develop his/her full potential, while others require more permanent care and dedication from the adoptive family
Waiting child program
In order to increase the chance of these children to find adoptive families, the Ministry of Justice has introduced a special procedure. Each month, the Ministry of Justice publishes on its website brief information about the children for whom there are no suitable adoptive parents in the register. Upon submitting a request from an accredited adoption agency, the Ministry of Justice provides detailed information and pictures of the specific child. The accredited organization has two months to find a family for the child and to submit the family application to the Ministry of Justice.
Let` s Give A Chance!
Intercountry adoption is often the only alternative for finding families for special need children. Throughout the years, Vesta connected many special needs children with their forever families but there are still many children in Bulgaria who need a permanent home. We at Vesta are dedicated to our mission to work for the better future of the children and we know that together we can change their destiny.
Simplified procedure for adopting waiting children
The Ministry of Justice reviews immediately the applications for adoption of waiting children. The procedure of adoption of waiting children can be initiated also by families who are not registered at the Ministry of Justice and may not even have a complete dossier set. It is enough for the prospective adoptive parents to provide an application stating their willingness to adopt the specific child, together with a recommendation, issued by the agency which will be preparing their home study. Upon submitting the application, the adoptive parents have six months to provide the rest of the required dossier documents. This gives the adoptive parents the certainty that the Ministry of Justice will wait during this time for the family to provide all of the documents and will officially refer the child once they submit them.
This procedure is unique and gives an opportunity to adoptive parents, who are open to adopt a special need child or an older child to start the adoption procedure much faster.
The waiting child program gives a chance for the children that have been waiting the longest to find a family and aims at attracting the attention to them in order to increase their chance to be adopted.
How can I adopt a waiting child?
If you want to adopt a waiting child, please contact our partner organizations in your country. For more additional information on our partner organizations in your country, please contact us.
If I have questions related to the medical condition of the child?
We visit all the special needs children for whom we receive information from the Ministry of Justice. As a result of our visits we prepare additional, detailed reports on their medical condition, take pictures and videos. You can consult the medical information with doctors and specialists in your country. Upon request from the prospective adoptive parents we can arrange for additional medical tests to be performed and to answer all of your questions.