The Approval Process

17th September 2000

Lene calls our Social Worker to inform her that we have decided to initiate the process to adopt a second child.

19th September 2000

We receive a letter from the Copenhagen County Council Social Services, outlining the necessary documentation that is needed to start the adoption process.

26th September 2000

We return the requested information - wedding and birth certificates, financial information, wage and tax returns and criminal records from Denmark.

13th October 2000

Steven visits the doctor for the medical check-up

19th October 2000

Lene visits the doctor for the medical check-up

23rd October 2000

We send the medical information to the Social Services, and agree to them contacting Thomas' school

26th October 2000

The Social Services receive information from Thomas school (positive)

30th November 2000

Steven contacts our Social Worker to hear when the process is expected to start. They tell us that they are ready, but that it's difficult to plan a date due to office moves in the Social Services offices. We discuss back and forth, and agree that the meeting can be held at our our home instead. We agree on the 7th December 2000.

7th December 2000

We meet the Social Worker. Lene, Steven, Yanmei and Thomas (partly) participate in the meeting and we discuss a large number of topics - our reason for adopting a third child, impact on Yanmei and Thomas, home, finances, health, maternity leave and the next steps. 

21st December 2000

The County Council request an acceptance from from our Commune as to whether they can agree to us adopting a child. 

22nd December 2000

We receive a copy of the information that the Social Worker will be submitting for phase 1 acceptance (an assessment of the objective criteria). We ring to the Social Services saying that we don't have any comments and it can be submitted as is.

23rd January 2001

Our commune agree to us being able to adopt

2nd February 2001

The Social Worker calls to inform us that they have evaluated our case and we can now continue to phase 3 - the evaluation process. As we already have adopted a child, we do not need to participate in phase 2, the adoption course. We must choose an organisation before starting phase 3 - and must start phase 3 within 3 months.

3rd February 2001

We receive a letter confirming the above.

7th February 2001

We ring to the Social Worker and inform her that we have chosen DanAdopt (Terre des Hommes, the organisation we used with Yanmei's adoption, no longer handles adoption cases) and wish to start phase 3. We agree on the 23rd February for the meeting, which at the same time will serve as Yanmei's 12 month report meeting.

19th February 2001

The Social Worker calls and tells us that she wishes to collect information about Yanmei from her Kindergarten. We agree.

23rd February 2001   (morning)

The Social Worker calls stating that they haven't received information from DanAdopt stating that we are registered with them, and that we must be registered to start phase 3. Steven tells her that the bank didn't transfer the necessary funds as per our request and we didn't notice until Monday (19th) as we were on vacation. The money is now transferred.

23rd February 2001 (afternoon)

The combined phase 3 and 12 month report meeting takes place. Lene, Steven, Yanmei and Thomas (partly) participate. As part of the phase 3 evaluation, we discuss our expectations to a 3rd child, Yanmei's expected reaction, changes in the closest family, housing, work and information about the next steps.

2nd April 2001

The County Council send us the information that will be submitted for evaluation - we have 10 days to react and request changes.

3rd April 2001

We call and inform our Social Worker that we don't have any comments to the papers we have received.

11th April 2001

The Social Worker calls and informs us that we have been accepted for adoption of a child between 2 and 4 years, but not born before 1st August 1998 (as the child must be 9 months younger than Yanmei).

12th April 2001

We receive official confirmation of the above; sign and return the agreement allowing the County Council to send the relevant information to our organisation DanAdopt.