Hague Evaluation

Consultation Services

*We can answer a variety of questions about the Hague Convention on Intercountry Adoption. If you have a quick question, we are happy to answer you inquiry free of charge. Your question helps us better understand actual and real implementation.

*We offer on-site Hague Convention training, including CEUs.

Our Contributors

Karen S. Rotabi's work in adoption dates back to 1990 when she worked for South Carolina Department of Social Services in a permanency planning unit, transitioning foster children into adoption placements. Dr. Rotabi has provided homestudies and other adoption consultation services since that time, including assisting with difficult cases and adoption agency development. Her work history includes homestudy services for families living overseas, an area which she developed when she previously lived in Europe and Central America. She has a unique understanding of and experience with military and foreign service families living abroad. She currently lives in Virginia where she is Assistant Professor of Social Work for Virginia Commonwealth University. Her involvement with the Hague Convention implementation includes working as a volunteer Hague Evaluator for the US Department of State/Council on Accreditation. At this time, she is the managing contributor to the website which has been built concurently with the many changes and emergent issues related to the Convention.  She received her PhD from the University of North Carolina and her Masters in Social Work and Public Health from the University of South Carolina.  Her teaching beyond the Virginia Commonwealth University classroom includes workshops on a variety of issues, including ethics when working with children and families and supporting military families during deployment in addition to her workshop on implementing the Hague Convention.

Kelley McCreery Bunkers has worked in international child protection for the past 16 years. She currently resides in Ethiopia and works as an independent consultant focusing on alternative care and orphaned and vulnerable children issues.  From 2005-08 she was charged with the “Children Without Parental Care” component of UNICEF Guatemala, which supported the development of protection programs, including family preservation, foster care and domestic adoption.  She was also intimately involved in efforts to ratify the Hague Convention and pass an Adoption law in Guatemala.   Prior to joining UNICEF in Guatemala, Ms. Bunkers worked for six years as an independent consultant in Eastern Europe and Latin America for The World Bank, UNICEF, USAID, Save the Children, private foundations, and local non-profits that specialize in participatory program development and evaluation with an emphasis on child protection. In the 1990’s, Ms. Bunkers spent six years working in Romania for Holt International Children’s Services charged with managed alternative care programs, including domestic and international adoption. She later worked for UNICEF Romania, focusing on de-instutionalization efforts, the development of local social services for abandoned at-risk children, and the creation of community resource centers targeting the Rroma (gypsy) community. 

Photographs

All photos on this website are copyright protected and, except where otherwise noted, they are the work of K.S. Rotabi.

TRAINING

We have developed a 6-hour basic overview training for adoption agency personnel and board members. CEUs are offered.

ADMINISTRATIVE POLICY AND PROCEDURE

RIGHTS & RESPONSIBILITES

Our training can be tailored to your needs, either condensed or expanded upon.