[sak9645]

At present, and for the foreseeable future, there is going to be a need for international adoption of Chinese children.

While the Chinese government is seeking to encourage domestic adoption, the cultural change required for people accustomed to thinking of the "blood tie" as important will be enormous, and won't happen over the short term.

China is becoming more strict in its requirements for foreign adoptive parents, but not because of any lessening of the number of children available for adoption. China simply realizes that its program is very popular, and that young, healthy, married couples are willing to adopt Chinese children.

Therefore, it feels that it can choose the very best situations for its children in need of homes, and it defines the "best" as being situations that replicate the typical biological family in China.

China is claiming a slowdown in the volume of children whose dossiers have been given to the CCAA, at this time. However, the reduction in volume is NOT related to an unavailability of children.

Not all orphanages in China are eligible to participate in international adoption. An orphanage must be in a province willing to place children internationally, and must meet strict CCAA standards regarding such things as accurate and detailed record-keeping on each child, and the overall quality of care.

In the recent past, there has actually been an INCREASE in the number of orphanages certified to participate in international adoption. As an example, far more children are now coming from orphanages in northern China. In the early days of China adoption, almost all the children were from a few southern provinces.

However, particularly with the recent scandal in Hunan province, the CCAA is making very darn sure that orphanages comply with requirements concerning how babies are obtained, how the mandatory birthmother searches are being done, and so on. In addition, it is trying to upgrade the quality of medical and other information available to prospective parents, so that they can make an informed decision about their ability to parent a particular child.

Some of the requirements are not that easy for an orphanage to meet. In addition, some orphanages continue to be reluctant to send paperwork to the CCAA on children who are over age two or who have minor medical problems, believing that foreigners won't adopt them.

However, my belief is that most of the lengthening of wait times does NOT relate to a lessening of the numbers of available children. It actually relates to the INCREASING number of foreign couples and singles submitting dossiers.

The CCAA has always had a relatively small staff. This is due, in part, to the fact that the CCAA leadership wants to make sure that personal attention is given to each match, and that the staff are supervised closely so that they do not become unduly "cozy" with foreign agencies -- thus, perhaps, giving one preference.

It also knows, I suspect, that the Chinese government is not going to be eager to see a budget request for more staffing of a function that is something of an embarrassment. After all, most countries do not like to admit that they cannot take care of their own vulnerable populations, such as orphans.

As a result, even a modest increase in the number of dossiers submitted in any given month can cause major delays, because the same small staff will have to deal with the increased volume.

Think about it. China processes groups of child dossiers and groups of parent dossiers in the order in which they are received. If there are 100 dossier groups processed before your dossier group gets logged in, all of the families in those hundred groups must be matched with children before your group gets matched.

If the volume of dossiers submitted in any given month increases, either because more agencies submit dossiers or because the number of dossiers in each group increases, it will take a longer time until all the dossiers coming AFTER them are matched.

China placed about 7,900 children with Americans in 2005 -- about 900 more than in 2004. This is about a 12 percent increase. While this may not seem huge, it really is when you think of it in terms of a person with an already busy job being asked to increase his/her workload.

And, of course, the CCAA also gets applications from families in other countries. While I don't have statistics on these other countries, my guess is that all of them combined probably account for another 7,000+ adoptions from China.

So it is reasonable that it may take longer for an individual to go through a stack and get to your dossier. It is also reasonable that, instead of an eight month wait from Log-In Date to referral, there is a ten month wait.

I would urge you not to turn away from China because of a couple of extra months of waiting. If you feel a particular tie to China, like its organized program, etc., by all means, stick with it.

It is normal for all of us to become impatient when waiting for a referral. It is normal for all of us to look at every headline and try to analyze what it means for adoption.

But the fact is that China still has one of the more stable adoption programs around. It has also been surprisingly unaffected by world events, even things like the accidental U.S. bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade, the shooting down of an American spy plane, etc. Applications continued to be processed during the SARS scare, and travel was delayed only briefly. The same will probably be true in this time of avian flu concerns.

The bottom line is that you WILL be a parent, if you qualify. And you WILL be a parent far more quickly than you would if you tried to adopt from certain countries, where the wait can be two years. Moreover, your dossier is unlikely to be "held hostage" to whims of a particular Chinese official, or to events you read about in the paper.

Sharon