The Basics of China Adoption Reviewed

Since my last post a lot of friends and family have been asking questions about what this means. I figured, after a year, it is time to revisit the China adoption process. So here goes.

Starting October 2005 we began the process of completing our homestudy. We gathered the tons of paperwork required together with our homestudy (completed by a social worker or adoption agency) into a document called the "dossier". We applied with the Citizen and Immigration Services office to bring an orphaned child to the US (the I-600A form). This approval form and our dossier went to our international agency in Texas. The dossier was translated into Chinese and was mailed to China. The date it was mailed was our DTC (dossier to China) date. Our DTC was Jan 31, 2006. After it gets to China, it is logged into the CCAA (China Center for Adoption Affairs) office. this is our LID (log in date). Our LID was 2/27/06. Your LID is your "ticket in line" for your adoption. This is the date you are looking for. What are you waiting for? Your "referral". Your referral is all of the information about the child China has matched you with. Once your dossier is logged in, you wait in a stack of other dossiers to go through the review room. In the review room the CCAA goes through your dossier and makes sure there are no problems with your paperwork or any medical conditions they feel they need more information about. Once you are through the review room (the step we just passed) you are on to the matching room. The matching room is where the CCAA chooses a child for you. After you are matched with a child they send you your referral. Referrals are usually sent out once a month, usually the end of the month. Once you receive your referral, you sign an acceptance letter and send it back to the CCAA. Then you wait for travel approval to go to China to receive your child.

Some of you have questioned why it is taking so long. We don't really know. They say there are more family applications than there are children ready for adoption. As you can see from the picture on this post, they have just gotten through LIDs through October 13, 2005. We are just waiting for them to get to Feb 27, 2006. The problem is, as you can see in the picture, they are averaging about 15 days of LIDs per month. So it is taking about 2 calendar months to get through one month of LIDs. So, our LID is in February. They have referred through October 13. mid-October to end-February is 4 -1/2months. if they are working 2 months to one, it will take us 9 more months to get our referral. So we are looking (right now) at getting our referral in October/November. Right now, you can see, the wait is at 16 months. Of course this time is growing. So by the time we get our referral we are expecting the wait to be around 20 months.

The only hope I am holding on to of getting our referral sooner is that there probably weren't as many people logged in during the month of December 2005- because of the Christmas holiday - and in January/February 2006 because of the Chinese New Year. China closes for about 2 weeks during this time. So I am praying that these months don't take two months to get through. However, October 2005, from what I hear, is a bigger month. So it is possible that it could take 3 months to get through it.

So you see, this whole process is a guessing game as to when we could get our referral. So when you ask me and I can't really give you a definitive answer.... this is why!!! I really have no clue. And you can't call anyone and ask. Because no one else knows either. I will say that the table posted in this post is pretty sad. It is depressing that in October 2005 when we started this process, the wait was only 6 months. When we were LID in Feb 2006, the wait was only 9 months. The wait has really slowed down quickly.

All we can do is press on and keep smiling. I know she will be here soon. Just not soon enough!
Hope this helped to clear up some questions for those people not in the adoption community!