The China Process

So...you spend years of your life getting through the Australian process and breathe a sigh of relief on that glorious day that your paperwork (your adoption dossier) leaves Australian soil.

All done, right? All hurdles crossed? Not by half my friends!! There beginneth the China process....

1. Dossiers are received by the China Centre of Adoption Affairs (CCAA) in Beijing. From there, they are given an initial look-over by staff, and if all paperwork is up to scratch, the dossiers are then Logged In to the CCAA system. The date that your dossier is Logged In is very important....it is your Log In Date, and this forms the only way of tracking when you will hear news of your baby, as China processes all adoptions in chronological order by Log In Date.

Our Log In Date (LID) is 3.3.06

2. Sometime after being Logged In, your dossier makes it into the "Review Room" - where, funnily enough, dossiers are reviewed - this is the point at which your homestudy report/medicals/police checks are given a good look through. If the CCAA have any concerns about your suitability to adopt, or any concerns about whether you meet eligibility criteria, you are generally asked for more information at this point. Periodically, China will release information about which Log In Dates have successfully made it through the Review Room - this is a huge milestone as it is the first real sign that China think you are OK :-)

We made it through the Review Room in January 2008.

3. The Matching process.
As I said before, China processes parents' dossiers in the date order in which they were logged in. Matching of parents to children and the subsequent posting of these "referral packages" tends to happen once about every 4 weeks or so....So every month (or thereabouts) China will post referrals to couples all over the world who have certain Log In Dates. So in our case, the day that our referral for our child is posted from China, couples all over the world who also have a Log In Date of 3rd March 2006 will also have their referrals posted to them.

The million dollar question is how many Log In Dates China will process every month....and therefore hoq quickly you will hear news of your child. It makes sense that in order for wait times to be stable, then China needs to process one month of Log In Dates every month. In order for wait times to decrease, China needs to process MORE than one month of Log In Dates every month.....Unfortunately what has happened since we sent our dossier is that wait times have INCREASED, as China has only been processing 2-15 days worth of Log In Dates each month....this is why we have been waiting nearly 3 years now rather than the 10 months we were counting on.

Why are the processing times and wait times increasing? Well may you ask....there is a lot of debate in adoption circles and no clarity from Chinese authorities....but that's a topic for another post.

Right, so back to the processing.....

When your Log In Date gets to near the front of the line, your dossier is moved to the Matching Room...where (you guessed it!) your file is matched to a little person who needs a family.

Once all the matches are made for a particular month, the referrals/allocations are posted out worldwide.

About 2 weeks after we have confirmation that our Log In Date has been processed (we hear this via rumours on the internet that start out slow, then build and build as more and more people, usually Americans, get confirmation from their private adoption agencies that they are about to hear news of their children) we will get a phone call from our government agency.

Australians are usually the last in the world each month to get the news of their children as our government insists on having all information translated and checked by immigration/medical officers before they tell us who our children are......others who have been before us tell us that this time is absolutletly nerve wrecking - you know that your child's information is sitting on some government desk but no-one will confirm or deny that it is there.....THEY know who your child is, but you don't.....

I guess we're just going to have to suck it up and ......god forbid....be patient!!

I don't know if any of that makes sense......it's kind of hard to explain.....
T xxxx

Next Christmas

I wrote this for our darling child in 2005, at a time when I thought that by Chrismtas 2006 we would have him/her home. How wrong I was.

It is with a hopeful heart that I put this out there for him/her again this Christmas....how I pray that NEXT Christmas our dreams have come true.

Next Christmas
Next Christmas
There’ll be more gifts to buy,
More excitement,
More celebrations.

Next Christmas
The house will be a little more full,
A little less clean,
A lot more bright.

Next Christmas
Our laughter will be louder,
Our smiles wider,
Our joy deeper.

Next Christmas
We will cuddle you tight,
Stroke your black hair,
And shower you with love.

This Christmas
Hopeful eyes will look at the moon,
And dream of you,
And of having you home
Next Christmas.

Merry Christmas Bug

We love you darling. We hope that you are safe and warm today, and that your nannies find it in their hearts to give you a cuddle today. We hope that you have food in your tummy, and someone to give you a smile. You are always in our hearts and on our minds. Today will be spent dreaming of you, as always.

Mama and Baba xxxx

China Adoption - the inportant steps

We thought it might be interesting to some of you to know how the whole China adoption thing works...what the steps are, and where we are in the process. Perhaps that will make it more interesting as we get closer to "A Day" (allocation day). This post will be long (but then so is the whole process!!), but stick with me....

Firstly, we needed to go through our Government process, which works like this:

1. Submit initial application (it took us over 3 years to be able to do this because initially we had not been married long enough, and then once we HAD been married long enough they had stopped accepting applications!).
2. Establish your eligibility (medicals, references, police checks, financial checks etc)
3. Attend education days (2 full days of education about adoption and adoption-related issues)
4. Completle post-education "homework" and a life story book for your child. Our post-education "homework" was hughe (it has since been cut down). In total, our homework weighed 1.5kgs...all of this weight being stuff we had had to write!
5. Undergo assessment by an adoption contract worker. For us, this meant 5x3 hour visits over 3 months. It was painful...at first we were nervous but after a few hours we just became exasperated by how long our contact worker was taking. She no longer conducts assessments (Hmmm, wonder why?)
6. Adoption Contract worker writes a report which is then reviewed by the adoption department, and goes to an adoption panel (well, it used to - apparently this has changed now).
7. The adoption department then notify you of your approval to adopt.
8. Wait until 5 other couples are also approved to adopt from China, and then get placed in a "batch" with them
9. All "batch" members then prepare the paperwork, certified copies of documents, medicals, letters, financials, fingerprints etc for China
10. Once everyone submits all their paperwork, dossiers are then translated, authenticated, notorised and courierd to China

This then marks the end of the Australian part of the process, and the beginning of the Chinese part of the process. We attempted to begin this process in later 2001, but could not continue because we had been married for only a few months (you have to be married for 2 years according to our government's rules...other states have different rules). We then attempted to start the process again on the day of our second wedding anniversary...but by this stage the government had closed the books and were not accepting any more applications for an indefinate period of time.

Finally, in late September 2004 the government decided to accept adoption applications for 8 weeks only. We submitted our application on November 3rd, 2004. Our dossier was then sent to China on the 28th February, 2006. We were lucky - ours was a fast processing through the system - due in no small part to us being on the phone to the department every week!!

Coming soon....the China process :-)

T and P xx

December 2008

Merry Christmas to all our friends and family. We hope that this Christmas is filled with love and joy for all of you.

Welcome to our blog for those who are visiting for the first time! As you will see, it has been a veeeery long time since we updated it....all the best intentions and all that, but the reality of busy lives and increasing wait times for China adoptions has meant that this blog hasn't been a priority at all! As we come closer to news of our little Bug, however, we will aim to keep everyone updated!!

In the meantime, have a wonderful Christmas - try not to stress too much - and enjoy your families and friends.

Love,
T and P xxx