More About the Sri Lanka Process

We are slowly getting into the technicalities of the Sri Lanka process, as the end of the Alberta process is in sight.

Once our Home Study is all good and approved, it becomes a part of our Dossier. Our agency in Ontario will help us put together our Dossier. It will contain a bunch of documents, some of which we already have (Birth Certificates, Police Checks, etc).

Before being sent to SL, every single page of every document in the Dossier has to be notarized. Luckily, English is widely used in Sri Lanka for business. Our Dossier has to be sent in English, so all we will need to have translated is our Birth Certificates (from French and Spanish).

When this is done, our Dossier is sent to Sri Lanka. There is a little detail our agency has to figure out here... The province of Alberta requires that the Dossier be sent to them and that they forward it to the Sri Lankan authorities. My agent told me that the Sri Lankan authorities want to receive it via the Consulate. I am not sure yet what the path will be for our file to make it to the country, she is checking into that.

Once the Dossier is in Sri Lanka, it is in a black box... We won’t know what’s happening until they assign a child to us. In the meantime, an agent over in Sri Lanka will go to orphanages to liaise with the authorities.

And then, one day, our agent in Alberta will get a referral for us. Hopefully this is sooner rather than later! We were told to expect up to 2 years wait.

They will call us and make our day. I mean... our year!

We will review the proposal and have a doctor look at the referral pictures. If the doctor recommends more medical tests, our agent in Sri Lanka will take the child to a doctor over there. If we do accept the child, then we will enter the next stage of the process: the adoption and immigration.

I expect we will have to wait a long, painful 3 months before being able to travel to meet our child. There is only one trip required. Both parents have to be at the court hearing, but then only one parent is required to stay in the country for 4 to 6 weeks before they can take the child home with them.

If we do get our approved Home Study by mid-January, it will probably be a few more months before our dossier is all ready to be sent to Sri Lanka. So this is for next year... For now, we still have 2 Home Study interviews to go through...