The State Weighs In:
ODHS’s Report On Our Complaint
(with running commentary)
The ultimate fruit of our original complaint to the Ohio Department of Human Services after Cyril’s death was a four-page review of investigations and conclusions, filed by Linda Saridakis on March 10, 2000.
The first two pages are devoted to a recap of the investigation ... our initial complaint, Linda’s call and visit to Denise (whom, as we suspected, was very upset and couldn’t figure out what we could possibly have had to complain about, since after all we were adopting another child through them), our written complaint and supporting documents. Basically, it’s about what and when.
It seems she boiled our complaint down to these areas of concern:
1. BBAS’s failure to promptly review our homestudy and remind us it was supposed to have been on agency letterhead, which cost us a month that could have made a difference later on.
2. The misleading statements by Denise regarding how long Anguel’s adoption would take.
3. The diaper controversy, previously discussed.
4. The medicals for Cyril and Yekaterina, which Denise had alleged to be exactly the same, suggesting that they should be taken with a grain of salt; but were not.
5. The lack of medical contact info in Perm.
6. The display of some of her other Bulgarian clients’ children on her wesbite’s photo gallery to suggest that they had already been adopted, when in fact those adoptions were still pending in Bulgaria.
The rest of the report states findings and conclusions, most of them taken almost word-for-word from her letter to Denise, written the previous day.
These are of interest, and we have here interspersed them with some of our comments where appropriate.
Rule Violations
The review of the documents submitted, web site information and several conversations with both the complainant and the agency did not verify any rule violations.
Fine. There didn’t seem to be much she would have been able to do, and we really didn’t expect any citations.
That’s not the way it should be, however.
Investigative Findings
The document related to Bulgarian Adoptions uses the word approximate time frame and states that the time frame does not begin until all documents are submitted. The agency states that all documents were not submitted [in a] timely [fashion].
So, BBAS waiting a month after we sent the last ones in had nothing to do with it?
The agency reviews documentation submitted once all information is received and not necessarily individual documents as they arrive, except for the homestudy. The homestudy was reviewed in approximately two weeks, according to the complainant
Two weeks which could have made a lot of difference to our adoption, as we’ve previously stated. That translated into an entirely wasted month while we basically paid the homestudy agency a couple of hundred dollars for a retyping job we could have almost done ourselves if it had been allowed.
Had we had that month, Cyril might have had it too, or we might have been given an entirely different referral.
Really, Denise was on us to get our dossier done as soon as we could, in both adoptions. She communicated a mild sense of urgency which we found perfectly understandable and shared, and we delivered as much as we could, only to receive ... what? Hurry up and wait?
We busted our butts in spring 1999 so she could let that homestudy sit unreviewed for even something as basic as agency letterhead for two weeks (and it might well have been longer if Elizabeth hadn’t visited when she did ... God, that would have really torqued us off) and then again right before we went to Russia so she could wait until after the holidays for a traveling family to save her money on shipping them over to Bulgaria.
Nice to see BBAS took our adoptions as seriously as we did.
The agency has not received the autopsy report on this child, who is the subject of this complaint, and that this case is still under investigation in Russia. There is no time frame regarding this. The complainant still has not received the autopsy report.
And wouldn’t for almost two years ... without BBAS or its then-facilitator’s help, we should add..
Ms. Hubbard stated that the incident regarding her daughter and whether or not she was wearing a diaper must have been misunderstood. There were two incidents of visiting with her daughter in Russia and the first time she had a diaper on and the second time she did not. The agency owner states she has a video to verify this.
Go back here for an extended discussion of this one.
The agency stated that the family was sent a “release form” for the return of their funds. This was verified by both parties. The release contained conditions that the complainant is having their attorney review.
See the release here.
The agency stated that the family was provided with a medical contact person in Russia, per the contract. She stated that they received the name of this person, prior to leaving the United States. The complainant does not agree.
This is one of the few things which Ms. Saridakis could have done better followup on. As stated in our response to Denise’s version of events, Denise’s offer of proof for this is severely wanting, to say the least — an unsigned form printed out from Dr. Eric Downing’s web site.
Linda should have asked us about it when she got it, especially since Denise produced no evidence that we received it. And we didn’t — we don’t see how this would have been that hard to prove. In fact, the burden of doing so would have been on Denise.
Even if she had just asked us the name of the medical contact person we were supposedly given in Russia, without even mentioning this form, our puzzled response would have given her a clue that Denise was trying to fudge this one. And perhaps cited her, and just maybe given us enough of an opening for a breach-of-contract lawsuit (probably the reason why Denise covered this one with an outright fabrication where elsewhere she merely resorts to the legally safer tactic of a half-truth or contorted interpretation of undisputed facts).
Oh well. But, if we had been given this information, Elizabeth’s mother wouldn’t have had to call the U.S. embassy in Moscow to try and see if they had any doctors we could contact.
This is not merely a simple case of “she said, they said” ... this is “she lied and they could have proved it if they’d just been asked.”
The agency stated that homestudy requirements are usually sent to the person completing the homestudy. These requirements vary depending on the type and location of the adoption. The complainant stated that they had this literature, however they did not feel it was absolutely clear to them that the homestudy had to be on agency letterhead.
The review of the agency web site showed that another agency client had adopted a specific child. The agency stated that the adoptions on the Internet were not all finalized, however this is only a matter of formal legality in Bulgaria and that the family had requested this be included.
It isn’t totally clear what “this” refers to in the last sentence. We think it refers to the photo itself, although it could arguably be parsed as referring to the implied disclaimer (yet that is itself given the lie by the page in question, no longer up, which made no mention of the fact that none of these children had come home from Bulgaria yet).
In any event, this is a sparkling example of Denise’s disingenuousness at its worst.
First, she’s trying to take advantage of the nature of the Bulgarian process, something she didn’t even bother to explain to us until we repeatedly pestered her about it, by which the legal completion of the adoption takes place several months before the child is cleared to travel. The actual parents need not be present at the hearing, and most American parents have not (this may be changing, however).
Over and above the question of whether or not even this was true of the children shown on the web pages at issue (we’re pretty sure that for at least one family this wasn’t true, which means that even by her own loose standards Denise was telling a fish story ... that’s pretty bad), there’s another more important point.
To wit, for most adoptive parents, domestically or internationally, the adoption is not “done” when the court completes it. You consider the adoption complete when your new child is sleeping in your house.
And, in Bulgaria, there is a very long lag between those two events. Representing those children’s adoptions as complete just does not pass the smell test for any marketer with even a scintilla of ethics.
Denise also seems to imply it was OK because the family had given permission for the child’s picture to be up there.
That’s moot. Although BBAS did indeed seek our permission to have Anguel’s picture on their site after his adoption (the answer was a resounding no, as you might well expect), the only difference it makes is that if it was true, the family is complicit with Denise in posting misleading advertising.
And we really don’t want to think that about them (although, we admit, it is possible with at least one BBAS family, but not those who had pictures of their children there).
As you’ll read below, Linda didn’t fall for Denise’s line either.
The agency stated that the Bulgarian government was concerned about the complainants other adoption due to the Russian situation. The agency indicated that they were aware of this due to information on the Internet, while the family felt that the agency had informed Bulgaria.
This isn’t really an issue now, except to note that Denise told us the former while Wendy Stamper told us the latter (Gotta keep your story straight, dear!)
It does, however, fit into Denise’s overall pattern of strongarming her clients into silence or at least monitoring their public posts on the Internet. It was subtle here, merely the hint to us that we were blabbermouths and might endanger things if we weren’t discreet.
The medicals on the two children were not the same, although they did contain some of the same information.
Alright! She backs us up completely on this.
The complainant will be working with [the] agency attorney from now on.
Unfortunately.
Assessment/Recommendations:
Linda couldn’t find any evidence that Denise and BBAS had broken any rules, as we said. But she wasn’t letting her off without a lecture — what ODHS tactfully calls “technical assistance” — on a few things.
The following recommendations were made to the agency:
The agency should not be posting information on the Internet leading one to believe that children have been adopted, when an adoption has not been finalized.
Pretty clear-cut, we think. Of course, the larger question is, why is there no regulation specifically addressing this sort of thing?
The importance of documentation of all events was discussed. A check list of documents and dates or signatures received and dates on information received by the family should be developed.
Yes indeed — had BBAS kept such information, it would have been harder for them to weasel out of several aspects of our (and others’) complaints.
Again though ... it begs the question: Why isn’t this sort of tracking required in the first place? That’s why we suggested it in our comments on the draft Hague regulations.
The agency should provide all the medical information to the family and allow the family to determine whether they can care for a particular child. The social worker, as part of their assessment may determine that the family cannot care for a certain type of child or recommend a certain type of child. The agency should not tell a family to take a gamble or encourage a family to adopt a certain type of child.
WHAM! Underneath the diplomatically bureaucratic prose, you can see that Linda seems to have been really stern about this rebuke (we would love to have heard the conversation that produced this).
Her comments go to a problem in adoption that is far wider than just Building Blocks, however ... too many agencies or facilitators, despite (or because of) their original good intentions, get to the point where they start confusing the needs of the child and the family with the needs of the placement.
And adoption is about creating families, not just making placements.
BBAS’s contract, as Rick Marco has informed people in other situations, sets the agency up as simply a provider of information about adoptable children.
That’s it. They should not, ethically, be involved in attempting to influence the client’s decision. If a significant percentage of people who decline one referral give up on adoption, the agency just has to live with that. Or not.
Again, only full and effective implementation of the Hague Convention and its accompanying regulations can even begin to change this.
The agency should revise the form regarding Bulgarian Adoptions and include the last bolded sentence in the first paragraph. We discussed not giving any time frames that cannot be kept.
To us this last sentence is the most faintly damning thing in this entire report.
First is the tone ... how, exactly, did they “discuss” this? In the same sense, we suppose, that you and your parents “discussed” how you would not sneak out of the house and go to parties when you were a teenager. Note that Linda kept it in the first person plural it was in from her letter to Denise, instead of rendering it into the impersonal form as she did almost everything else.
More importantly, is this an implication that Denise admitted to Linda at some point during their conversations (excuse us, “discussions”) about our complaint that her Bulgarian timeline, at least as originally stated to us, was wildly unrealistic and/or misleading?
If Denise had, as she would probably want to have us believe, good faith in the 4-6 month timeline she had originally been given by Valeri, why would the subject of the impossibility of keeping that timeline, or any timeline for that matter, have come up to enough of an extent to warrant mention in this report?
It would have been nice for us to know at that point, but Linda probably had to keep the full substance of her discussions with Denise confidential.
There’s no proof of this, it’s true. But Linda’s wording leaves it an open possibility.
Oh, and here’s the kicker. Despite this little wrist-tap from the state, Denise persisted in making this ridiculous 4-6 month timeline claim to new clients until at least that summer. Even after some of the first BBAS Bulgarian adoptions had been completed in about twice that length of time.
Wonder what Linda would have said if she’d heard about that?
The agency has been cooperative during this investigation and has already developed forms to verify the transfer of information. This is a fairly new agency and is learning the importance of documentation and communication.
[Signature]
You don’t say? This goes beyond documentation and communication to basic courtesy and customer service. If the state has to be the one to teach you those things, you’re in trouble.
Judging by what we’ve learned subsequent to this report being filed, their learning curve is ... well, we suppose a very sensitive eye could see enough to call it a curve.
As for the forms, there seems to be little indication that they are used productively to improve BBAS’s operations, much less used at all.
(But Denise has learned one undeniable thing from this — the importance of at least presenting the appearance of documentation and communication when it comes to covering her ass).
One other note: In her letter to Denise the previous day outlining these findings and conclusions, which is similar enough that we decided not to include it on this website, there is one addition to this last, a reminder of “the sometime[s] sensitive nature of the client population you are working with.”
It bears note that there is a similar admonition in her final report on the Hutchison complaint — about the only thing these two reports have in common.
Even before us, she had learned how not to learn.