No Longer Waiting For Raina: November 2007

With the impending closing in on the 24 month wait from LID to referral, Rumor Queen's site has gone crazy with posts from bewildered and discouraged people. There was a posting from an adoption agency on the projected wait time, the reasons behind it, and what the appropriate response should be from all involved. Rumor Queen herself blogged about this original posting with her own response to each key point. The following is from her blog. Get ready - this is a definite brain ache!

November 8th, 2007
"As has been reported in the forum, a respected agency has done some research, and sent a letter to their clients with some answers. The agency is clear to say that what they are saying is what they believe is true. I’m going to do this in bullet points, with my thoughts in italics.

Abandonment is down. Farmers and low income city residents who have one female child get nationwide medical and retirement insurance. This is part of a drive to try to balance the female population. (I agree with this statement, there are lots of incentives for people to keep their girls. I’m not sure abandonment is down as much as we are being led to believe, but I agree that abandonments are happening in some areas less than they did in the past.)

Some orphanages still have many children. The agency reporting seems to think that in some cases this is because the orphanage directors saw other orphanage directors face severe punishment in the Hunan scandal. (We’ve talked about this as well, that some directors are now afraid to send paperwork because of the way the directors were treated in the Hunan scandal. I’m told the CCAA smoothed that over by issuing clear procedures, and assuring directors that if the procedures were followed as outlined then the directors could not be prosecuted later. But, maybe some of them weren’t convinced.)

Some orphanage directors do keep kids just to keep the orphanage open, or to keep receiving government funding. But some orphanage directors are acting in the best interest of the children in their care and are working to place all of the children that they can place. (I agree with this statement, too. Some orphanages are overflowing, some are almost empty. I’ll also say that some are widely using foster care, too.)

The Civil Affairs Ministry began requiring police reports documetning a child’s abandonment status and this has caused more work for the SWI’s and the local police departments. (We’ve talked about this as well, after the Hunan scandal some rules were changed, and one of them was that an abandoned child had to have a police report when found or they could not be adopted internationally.)

Domestic adoption is up. The average “donation” paid for a domestic adoption is close to $6,000. Plus the costs to prepare paperwork are not as expensive. (I’m not sure this is the case in all provinces, as I’m aware of an orphanage where the total costs to adopt domestically are around 2500 yuan which is around $330. Perhaps the higher fee involves those who go through the CCAA instead of going straight to the orphanage? I’m sure that $6,000 is there in some cases or the agency would not have reported it. It really bothers me that there seems to be this “competition” between domestic and IA though. If domestic adoption can handle the orphan population then there should not be IA. If domestic can not, then there should be IA. And cost should not come into play. From what I’ve been told, domestic adoption is indeed up, but not in enough numbers come close to emptying the orphanages, so IA is still needed. Both should be able to co-exist without monetary competition. )

In regards to the Olympics, the agency feels that China is of the mind to just not rock the boat about anything until the Olympics are over. Their priority is to finish the Olympics with no problems cropping up. They are not going to try to force an SWI to send files now because it’s safer to do nothing and not risk drawing negative attention to the program. (While I personally think the Olympics are playing a larger role in the slowdown, I appreciate that perhaps the role is more subtle. This agency’s statement is actually better than my own thoughts, because in my version there is no reason to try to improve things once the Olympics are over. In this version there seems to be a possibility that things may improve after the Olympics.)

The agency feels that the CCAA does care about the wait, but they are not as powerful as we think they are. They are at the mercy of the provinces and orphanages right now, they get whatever is sent to them and cannot demand more. (I’m still digesting this one. What I’ve heard previously is that the CCAA has their hands tied by the higher ups telling them what they can and can’t do. This version has their hands tied by the orphanages and provinces. The end result is the same though, the CCAA is doing the best they can and they are not the bad guy.)

The CCAA was created in 1996 with a workload of 3,000 placements a year. China wanted to send less babies than South Korea and Russia. In 1997 the CCAA placed more than South Korea and there were discussions about it. China became proud that families liked their children, and the number was raised to more than 10,000. (Yes, and from what I heard someone changed their mind about the “pride” part of that back in 2005 and thus things started slowing down.)

China is the only country who places mostly abandoned children. Other countries place children with known birth parents or extended families. As China develops, their IA program may evolve into a system similar to that of other countries. This will likely take a while, but there is a good chance that it will happen. (Wow. That is completely new information. And could be a very big deal.)

Families who do not mind waiting will get a referral. The wait will be four years, worst case scenario. The agency is clear that they trust these statements. (I completely believe the first part, that if you are prepared to wait you’ll eventually get a referral (assuming you are still eligible when the time comes.) I do not think that the CCAA or China plans to completely stop the program any time soon. However, I wonder how they can be sure about a worst case scenario. That being said, my own feelings have been that the worst is probably going to be somewhere around the four year mark as well. The math can (and does) take us much farther, but I just can’t bring myself to believe that it will go much over four to four and a half years.)

I think I’ve hit all of the main points. Most of it is stuff we’ve been over dozens of times before, but it is nice to have a respected agency put their two cents in.
I think that the only truly new “news” is the future possibility of China allowing children with known families to be adopted.
The four year maximum thing has come to us a few times before, so it’s not brand new, but having this particular affirmation of that does give it more weight (to me, at least)."