December 1, 2003

U.S. Department of State, CA/OCS/PRI

Adoption Regulations Docket Room

SA-29

2201 C. Street, NW

Washington, D. C. 20520

To Whom It May Concern:

We appreciate the opportunity to share with you our concerns regarding
the proposed rules (22 CFR Parts 96 and 98) for the Hague Convention on
Protection of Children and Co-Operation in Respect of Intercountry
Adoption. We have also submitted comments via Joint Council On
Intercountry Adoptions as part of a group response. We are aware of
comments submitted on a point-by-point basis from other respected
agencies such as World Association for Children and Parents, and believe
they gave an astute depiction of the concerns that agencies are facing
under the proposed rules referred to above. In this letter we would like
to share with you in simple terms the concerns of our agency starting
with a brief biography.

PLAN Loving Adoptions Now, Inc. is a private nonprofit licensed adoption
agency placing children for adoption since 1975. Our roots extend back
to the time when the Vietnam War was coming to an end -- our first
children placed were from Operation Airlift. Over the years we have
remained active and progressive in helping orphan children in the United
States as well as many countries around the world.

PLAN was established by a group of adoptive parents (including Ann
Scott, PLAN's Executive Director and adoptive mother of 16 children) who
bonded together for purposes of support, education, and humanitarian
work and formed a corporation in 1973. In 1975, this same group applied
for and was granted an adoption license. It is important to note the
agency was not started by "professionals" but by lay people who wanted a
new, more innovative and user-friendly approach to adoption. Preadoption
education was and is the cornerstone of our agency. PLAN's philosophy is
that if you educate prospective adoptive parents, they can decide for
themselves if adoption is right for their family and what child would
best fit into their family. Part of the education process is helping
families understand the risks involved in any adoption, domestic or
international. In addition to the preadopt classes, families are
provided with additional country-specific education materials. For many
years PLAN has prided itself on being a parent-led family-friendly
agency in relation to the services we provide to adoptive parents. We
have worked with thousands of wonderful adoptive parents in uniting
children and families in adoption -- this is our mission!

In the past five years or so we have seen the atmosphere changing --
prospective adoptive parents are less focused on the needs of the child
and more focused on their own needs -- hence the desire to find the
"perfect" child to replace the biological child they dreamed of having.
As an agency we have experienced more "threats" of litigation when the
adoption does not proceed as planned, (countries closing or changing
their adoption programs unexpectedly, civil war, etc.). Quite frankly,
we have been "forced" into a position of "guarding" our backside. To
quote a comment from Lillian Thogersen in her comments regarding: The
Liability and Risk Allocation Provisions (96.45(c) and 96.46 (c): "The
scope of risk adoption agencies face in our litigious society far
exceeds the cost of reimbursing adoption fees." To increase this risk by
allowing adoptive parents a broader scope for litigation will exacerbate
an already difficult problem. In the past, lawsuits were a rarity in the
adoption field - these days there are firms who specialize in suing
adoption agencies especially in cases where the child has previously
unknown/undiagnosed medical conditions. As an agency, we are well aware
of the risk we take in placing each and every child. We no longer
present children as "healthy" rather as "no known medical needs,"
reinforcing to prospective families that we as an agency can not
guarantee the health or medical information on a child especially one
that is foreign born, possibly abandoned with no background information.
Medical care/testing in foreign countries is sketchy at best, and simply
legislating agencies to be responsible for these services will not make
them more reliable, nor is it realistic to believe this will happen.

In an effort to keep fees as low as possible to adoptive families, in
the first years of our agency, we did not carry professional insurance
but have found it absolutely necessary these past several years. The
problem comes in finding a market for this type of insurance and at an
affordable premium. Our rates have been raised every year, sometimes as
much as 40% with virtually no prior notice. We have recently learned our
insurer is no longer insuring for our market and we are forced once
again in the next 60 days to find a new insurer, then hope and pray it
is affordable. The proposed requirement of one million dollar insurance
provision per occurrence makes insurance nearly impossible to obtain,
nor in our experience is it necessary -- to date we have had no lawsuits
related to our work in international adoption.

We share all this with you so that you may have some understanding of
the situation as it exists today even before the proposed Hague Adoption
Convention regulations. In the past, agencies and adoptive parents have
shared the responsibility for the risks involved in international
adoption. Agencies are well aware that even if an adoptive family signs
a liability waiver, if the agency perpetrates fraud or an egregious act,
no waiver is going to protect the agency. On the other hand, agencies
must be able to protect themselves against wrongful adoption claims.

If agencies are mandated to be responsible as the "primary" agency for
all facets of the adoption placements in the United States and in
foreign countries, insurance coverage, in our experience, will be
virtually impossible to obtain thereby effectively ending foreign
adoption. If this is the goal of such policy then it was well crafted!
Also no agency can control the factors that lead to the need for foreign
adoption in the first place -- poverty, neglect, social problems,
political upheaval, etc. Agencies can only do the best they can in
working with reputable contacts/agencies and have a contract/working
agreement of standards and expectations. Our agency is licensed with the
government in such countries as: Peru, Colombia, India, and China. In
African countries, we have working agreements with in-country
organizations whose work includes not only adoption but also other types
of humanitarian services.

The outcome of sections 96.45 and 96.46 as we see it is accredited
agencies will be forced to limit their relationships with other
"supervised" agencies, making services to families more difficult to
obtain and more expensive. It is highly unlikely that insurance
companies will insure an agency that has legal responsibility for
personnel other than their own employees, or such coverage would be
unaffordable for most if not all agencies.

We urge you to reconsider the effect that such policies would have on
the very people the Hague Convention pledges to support and protect.

Respectfully submitted,

Dick Osborne

Board President

Ann Scott

Executive Director

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