On Friday, July 29, we went to a meeting in Omaha where we heard from Holt's Director of Services for their China Program. As you can imagine, she was asked a ton of questions about the length of the wait for referrals.
The gist of the answer on the long waiting period was this, at a meeting held in December 2006 the CCAA (Chinese Center for Adoption Affairs) announced that the number of dossiers received at the end of 2005 and through 2006 had increased over 200% from previous years. With this increase there are more dossiers for families than paper-ready children available for adoption, causing the wait time to increase. There are literally thousands of dossiers at the CCAA awaiting a referral and while there are undoubtedly enough children available in China, not all orphanages or children are registered with the CCAA for adoption. Unfortunately, there are extremely rural orphanages that lack the resources needed to register with the CCAA. The CCAA is working to register more orphanages; however, this is a lengthy and complicated process.
It is estimated that roughly 1/4 of the orphanages in China are registered with the CCAA, so you can imagine how many children are not being adopted and growing up in orphanages.
So, all that being said, there are a few glimmers of hope that the waiting period will a least stop expanding. Certainly, when new applicants see the length of the wait, they will choose another country--although it is common in the US to wait for 'years' as well. People may drop out of the process due to the wait and with the new requirements the CCAA has put into place, that too could lessen applicants and shorten the wait. However, we're not sure that will be before we're done.
We planned on waiting at least a year anyway, so we're not that wound up about it yet. Perhaps as we get toward the end of next year we'll start getting impatient, but I'm not going to 'plan' on being impatient. Guess what will happen then?
It's completely out of our control.
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