Info on Wait Times 1

Again, from Yahoo China adoption groups:

This came from an agency rep. who attended the Joint Council on
International Children Services. Please know that the China Center
of Adoption Affairs (CCAA) has not given any of the following
information in writing, so unless otherwise indicated, the
information below is simply a collaboration of information from
adoption professionals throughout the U.S. who are currently working
with the CCAA:

1. There are currently 25,000 dossiers at the CCAA that have been
processed and are waiting to be matched with referrals.

2. There are only 400-700 kids' files being sent to the CCAA each
month. The CCAA has to wait on these files to be sent to them from
the Department of Civil Affairs in each province, and the Dept. of
Civil Affairs must wait on the files to be sent to them from each
respective orphanage.

3. The backlog is thus caused because there are more dossiers
waiting for referrals than there are available children's files
being sent to the CCAA.

4. Orphanages must file a tremendous amount of paperwork in order to
register one child for adoption. The paperwork is being done, but
not fast enough to keep the waiting period less than 18 months.

5. There are no longer specific orphanages that can send children's
files to Civil Affairs and then to the CCAA, any orphanage in China
is now permitted to send files to the CCAA.

6. The Chinese government is working to register more children for
adoption (who are deemed abandoned children and thus legally
available for adoption).

7. Regarding the new regulations that will go into effect on May
1st, 2007, China made the decision to implement much stricter
regulations because they want to decrease the wait for referrals.
They talked through many different ways to decrease the waiting
time, and they decided to tighten up the regulations to accomplish
their goal. They do not desire to cease adoptions altogether.

8. The CCAA has confirmed that the 2008 Olympics in Beijing will not
affect the adoption process at all.

9. The new regulations going into effect on May 1st are not
retroactive. This means that no dossier sent to the CCAA and
arriving there before May 1st will be reviewed according to the new
guidelines, however, the CCAA has already begun reviewing dossiers
with much more caution. It has recently become commonplace (amongst
all agencies working with the CCAA) for the CCAA to request
additional documentation regarding finances, medical conditions, and
various other items in the dossier. Dossiers submitted after May 1st will be under very strict review according to the given guidelines.

10. How long will the waiting times for referrals of non-special
needs children extend to? The CCAA refuses to predict waiting times
of any kind. Any timeframe given to any agency is approximate and
cannot be guaranteed.