Program Criteria
Children Available:
Infant boys and girls are available, as are toddlers and special needs children. Parents may specify preferred sex. To be adopted the child must be under 15 years old and if over 9 years old must give his/her consent to the adoption. Boys and girls are generally available in equal numbers.

Special Needs Children:
We sometimes receive notice of special needs children from the care centres in Vietnam with which we work. The special needs range from mild, correctible issues to more serious conditions. Some of the conditions seen are cleft lip or palate, correctible heart problems, hemangioma, strabismus or esotropia, risk factors (hypotonia, hypertonia, low birth weight, prematurity), hepatitis B, and others.

Both boys and girls are available and the babies tend to be about 3 months old at referral and about 6 months old when the parents travel to receive the child.

While we have a backlog of families waiting for healthy children it is often difficult to find homes for these special needs ones, especially where there are more serious health issues. As such we will accept dossiers of parents right away who are willing to adopt a special needs child. They are not subject to the usual waiting list. However, there may still be a considerable wait time until such a child is identified.

Parental Requirements:
Any adult having reached the age of majority is eligible. Parents must be 20 years older than the child. Couples must be married and and not same sex. Single females are eligible.

Why Children are Available:
Single parenthood is not accepted, and children are abandoned because of this social prejudice and due to poverty. Increasingly, children are orphaned because of AIDS.

Family Background:
If birth family information is known it will be provided with the child's documentation.

Wait Times:
Wait times vary depending on the circumstances of each case. Generally, parents requesting an infant of any gender will wait 22-28 months from when their file arrives in Vietnam to receiving a proposal for a child. Travel usually occurs 6-10 months after parents accept the referral. (See also the update to the right.)

In-Country Time Required:
Only one trip to Vietnam is required. The average length of stay is 2-3 weeks.

Child's Citizenship:
Upon entering Canada, the child will have Permanent Resident status. Canadian citizenship is not automatic and must be applied for by the parents. The child retains his/her Vietnamese citizenship. NOTE: A new procedure will streamline the child's citizenship process. For the latest information contact TDH Ontario or check the Citizenship and Immigration Canada web site.

Post-Adoption Requirements:
Vietnam requires a legal committment to submit two reports annually for the first three years, then one annual report until child reaches 18 years.

Costs:
Costs change often due to the fluctuation of the Canadian dollar and fee changes implemented by government agencies in Canada and abroad. Please contact TDH directly for a current cost estimate.

About Vietnam
Vietnam is a country with a population of 76,000,000, of which more than half are children under 15. It is organized into some 55 provinces, each directed by a People’s Committee, the supreme authority, and each with one or more state-run orphanages.

Although Vietnam is a country with an extremely high literacy rate, the average income is still about $30 US per day. Single parenthood is not accepted, and children are abandoned because of this social prejudice and due to poverty. Increasingly, children are orphaned because of AIDS.

Documents Required
This is a brief description of the documents required by Vietnam. TDH will provide more details and assistance.

1. Vietnamese Application for Adoption form, provided by TDH (2 originals) plus 4 photos of each applicant
2. Marriage certificate, if applicable (official copy from Registrar of Civil Status)
3. Photocopy of the photo pages of each parent's passport (both passports to be copied on one page)
4. Homestudy and Letter of Approval from the Ministry of Children and Youth Services
5. Medical certificate of each adoptive parent on form provided by TDH (must be less than six months old at the time dossier is received in Vietnam)
6. Legal commitment to produce and send follow-up reports
7. Letter of employment of each person or financial statement
8. Police certificate (must be less than one year old at the time dossier is received in Vietnam)

Vietnam Program

October 13, 2009: Photo Policy and Sensitivities
TDH requests that you please refrain from posting photos of your children before their adoption. This request comes from Vietnam itself. It seems that one of the orphanages was shown a photo of one of their children in process of adoption with TDH by a person from another country. We understand that you want to show your child as soon as possible, but we also must respect the wishes of the child's country of origin, especially as the country is the legal guardian of the child at this point.

Vietnam in particular is very suspicious of the Internet. Please wait to post photos of the children until they are truly yours - at the moment of their adoption (the Giving and Receiving ceremony). Also, for those in process who have posted photographs please remove them until the adoption is completed. We do not wish to compromise our good relations with the Vietnamese authorities nor jeopardize future adoptions. We thank you for your understanding.

Updated August 18, 2009: Program Full
We are not currently accepting new applications for the Vietnam program as we have reached the maximum number of families that we can work with at present. When we are again able to handle new applicants we will indicate as such here.

The following is a brief description of the Vietnam program, as offered by TDH Ontario. For more in-depth details, contact TDH Ontario. Please note that due to the nature of international adoption the information here may change without notice.

Adoptions were suspended as of January 2, 2003 at the moment Vietnam's Decree Number 68 entered into force, requiring any country wishing to effect adoptions with Vietnam jointly accede with Vietnam to an international treaty on cooperation in child adoption. Such a treaty with Canada was signed on June 27, 2005. The necessary accreditation of agencies also came into effect with this new law, and TDH was the first agency in Canada to receive accreditation under the new program.

The child must be living in a feeding center (orphanage) legally established in Vietnam. A child living in a family may be adopted if s/he is an orphan, disabled, or kin to the applicant for adoption. However, it is TDH's policy to work only with children in orphanages. The central authority in Vietnam is the Department of International Adoption under the Ministry of Justice.

TDH proposes a child to the parents and provides all known information about the child. The parents discuss the proposal with their Adoption Practitioner and have a reasonable delay to accept the proposal of the child. TDH takes the child for a medical examination to the medical practitioner in Vietnam designated by the Canadian Embassy there.

According to Decree 68 of the Government of Vietnam, the adoption of a child may take up to 120 days from the moment that the Department of International Adoption receives the dossiers of a parent for a specific child. This period may be prolonged in the event that additional investigation is required.

At present, adoption does not automatically confer Canadian citizenship on the child. The adoptive parents must make an application for sponsorship of a “child to be adopted” with Citizenship and Immigration Canada. TDH provides guidance and the necessary forms through this process.

Update: New Regulations in Vietnam
A new regulation has just been announced by the Department of International Adoptions (DIA) which is likely to have some effect on the length of the process. Effective immediately, documents sent from the Department of International Adoption to the provinces ((First letter, Second letter, parent dossier) will no longer be able to be picked up by the agency representatives and sent by EMS courier service to the province. Instead, the DIA will send them by regular mail. We estimate that this will lengthen the process between child proposal and trip to Vietnam by about 3 weeks.

Additionally, the DIA is now requiring that the adoption dossier of the couple be updated before a match with a child is made. (Previously, they had asked us for updated documents only once the proposal was made.) Thus, TDH will inform you when it is time to renew these documents, because at the time of the proposal, the medical must be less than 6 months old and the police clearance less than 1 year old.

It is also worth noting that the homestudy and the Ontario Ministry Letter of Approval are valid for 24 months from the time the Letter of Approval is signed. This was previously 18 months.

We first visited Vietnam personally in 1993. Hanoi was a different place then than it is now in 2007. And although I have watched Hanoi grow and develop over the intervening decade, it is that 90's Hanoi that comes to my mind when I think of Hanoi.

The old city was a lot quieter then. Some of the streets had sidewalks that were about fifteen feet wide and they stretched along the seamless black streets of the old city, under the extended tracery of the branches of the trees that lined the curb. In the soft, moist Vietnamese evenings, local families would set up tables and chairs on them. To me, a North American, they were like children's toy tea tables and chairs, the kind of thing you would find in a kindergarten, too small for my North American frame. The families would gather around them for meals. The mother would have cooked on little stoves; camp stoves in my eyes. Each family had a tiny feeble kerosene light. The flickering flames were scattered among the murmuring families like fireflies; babies and children were everywhere. Kids fetching and dumping basins of water darted around in the dusk. Women gossiping. Older men reservedly sat and watched the scene and us Westerners going by. Everything took place at ankle level. To walk down the sidewalk was like wading through a riverside campground.

The streets were long, mostly silent black rivers. The chief sound was the whirr of the rubber tires of the bikes and cyclos, the Vietnamese pedal-driven tricycles with the metal seats for two between the front wheels. Because of their shape and backward inclination, whenever I got into one of these seats, it felt like I was getting into one of the gondolas-for-two that were characteristic of the rides at a North American amusement park, like the Ferris Wheel and the Octopus.

I experienced one memorable and indelibly etched-on-my-memory scene when I came out of a modest hotel, stood for a moment and then walked to the curb. I was just walking outside for a few moments. But my movement was misinterpreted. Before me stretched the flowing black river of the street; the cyclos, bicycles and some cars rushing by like schools of 'fish' riding on top of the flowing black water. I was aware of the freshness of the evening air, the smooth hum of the road and brighter lights of the hotel marquee behind me and the twinkling lights on the sidewalks reaching into the distance on either side.

Then one, and then another and then still more other cyclos slowly drifted towards me and nosed in at my feet. I had the distinct impression that I was standing at the edge of a vast black pool of water, and the 'carp' had noticed me and were nosing into the shore in a semi-circle in the 'water' in front of me hoping for some food. The reality was that the cyclo drivers had spotted a North American exiting a hotel and walking to the curb; they had thought they might get a fare. But frankly, the reality was nowhere near as interesting as the romantic image of that Hanoi evening that has remained with me for the better part of a decade.

Every single one of the sinewy but rail-thin Vietnamese cyclo drivers was looking at me with a big smile on his face. I was embarrassed and did my best to explain that I was just out for a breath of air and was sorry that my behavior had misled them. A few cyclo drivers spoke some English and the message was received and scattered among the other drivers in Vietnamese like so many bread pieces being spread out among fish. They accepted the information and became attentive to the couple of drivers who could speak to me in English, looking for a little diversion from their evening patrol for customers. The little conversation, composed mostly of the kind of well-intentioned quips that one says at times like that, were shared among them, until they grew bored and began to drift off, one-by-one, like fish looking elsewhere for a potential sources of food.

I have a set of briefer snapshots as well, quick flash memories of reflective moments at various points in Vietnam: walking for the first time into the famous rooftop restaurant of the Rex Hotel, and imagining for a moment that the tables were filled with the ranks of military brass who occupied Saigon at various times of its more recent history. Standing at the foot of the 1954 replica of the 'One Pillar Pagoda' built a thousand years ago by Emperor Ly Thai Tong to resemble the Lotus blossom in his dream that contained his soon-to-be-born son and getting a sense of an enormous antiquity of Vietnam as a country. Standing in the morning on the street corner as the street was filled with the sudden surprise of a huge flock of high-school girls silently gliding past me on bicycles like a white cloud of settling birds, each with her dark hair in a bun and dressed identically in a fluttering white ao dai, the 1932 redesigned national costume of Vietnam: a long dress with a mandarin color worn over long pants. I was taken by the beauty of the sight. Walking through the restored monumental portal of the Confucian 'Temple of Learning' the National College founded in 1070, under the Ly dynasty, to train potential mandarins in a five-year course to qualify as local administrators and reflecting on the high level of respect the Vietnamese have always had for knowledge.

These are the memories I carry around with me of Hanoi. And while I know that that Hanoi has changed greatly, I like to think that the qualities of the people whose culture is preserved in these images have preserved them as the lasting qualities of the country I have come to deeply appreciate over the decades we have worked in Vietnam as TDH Canada.

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