Info from an American Agency

The following letter is from CAWLI (an American agency) to its clients and contains some saddening news about the continuing slowdown of referrals from China. The wait is expected to exceed THREE years

October 28, 2007

Dear Board and Dear Waiting Families:

I traveled to China with many questions: Did the Chinese welfare systems have children for adoptions? Would the wait extend to four years as many families talked about on internet? What was the Chinese governments’ plan to help American families to adopt faster?

I traveled to eight provinces and provincial level cities such as Shanghai, Chong Qing and Beijing and visited sixteen social welfare institutes and met with government officials at all levels. It has been an intensive six weeks.

When I sit at my desk to work on this report, I recall all these emails and phone calls we received in the past ten months: People reported that they saw many children in some orphanages or no children in the orphanages; 2008 Olympic Games would have some impact on the international adoptions; Increased domestic adoptions and less abandonment etc.

It is all true. As I reported to our families last year, again in this year the abandonment declined and domestic adoption has increased dramatically. This is the trend in China now. The Chinese government continues to emphasize the importance of a balanced female population in society and continues to carry on its nation-wide medical and retirement insurance for all farmers and low income city residents, with for-life monetary and benefit incentives for families who have one female child. The family planning policy has also been loosened to allow more children for each family.

At the same time, domestic adoption has increased. Yes, the Chinese families are adopting. They have noticed for long time that there are less and less girls in kindergartens and schools and there is a serious problem in gender imbalance in China. And, after many years of economic development, the Chinese middle and upper class build up tremendous wealth and now want to have more children – girls of course.

Yes, in some orphanages and provinces, one can still see MANY children. Some orphanage directors have no any incentives to place their children. Some orphanage directors suffered severe punishment in Hunan scandal in 2005 and that hurt the feelings in the community very deeply. Further, the Civil Affairs Ministry tightened its requirements on documents such as police reports for the children’s abandonment status and that caused a lot of work for the orphanage directors and the local police department. They have many good reasons to lace the children in domestic Chinese families: The average “Donation” to compensate the orphanage’s “Child Care Expenses” from domestic adoptions is 50,000 Chinese Yuan, equivalent to about $6,000. (The donations by the foreign families remain $3,000 for 15 years while the child care expenses tripled in China in same period – a visit to doctor’s office for cold could cost 500 Yuan!), no need to do documents on children; easy and quick adoption process with local county governments.

These elements set the tone for adoptions in general.

Yes, there are some orphanage directors who keep the kids there for wrong reasons: keep the orphanages open; keep receiving the government funding, and, and keep their jobs in place. Of course, there are also others who feel more similarly to us. Those orphanages who have discovered, the value of International placements for children and continually send children’s files to the CCAA once the child’s abandonment paperwork and physical are completed.

Many of us were interested in what if any impact the Olympic Games would have on adoption in China. We see that the Olympic Games’ impact is not that the CCAA will stop placing children with our families, but that the Chinese government does not want to force these orphanage directors, who are currently sending children’s files to the CCAA, to have these children adopted. It simply is not their priority for now. Their feeling is; Let us finish the Olympic smoothly without any problems. At this moment, whoever who brings in bad incidents are number one enemy to the Chinese people and the Chinese government. For high risk works such as international adoptions, it is safer if nothing is done.

I asked myself: how many healthy children are in these orphanages if we could persuade the directors to change their minds? Four thousand or five thousand? Still, comparing to the number of families with dossiers logged in at CCAA, it is terribly low, either way.

My big question in my heart is: Did anybody in CCAA care about the long wait like the American adoption agencies? If they do, what do they plan to do?

Of course we care – they all told me. “It is our job and only job! But, “we are not as powerful as people imagined!” I have to agree. CCAA could not make policies and could not push the orphanage to put their children into adoption track. They heard that some people thought they knew more about how many children were available and how long the wait could be, but were not up-front to prospective adoptive families. The fact is, they told me, “we really do not know much more!” One province official told them this particular province had about 3000 healthy children and promised to send the files Still, CCAA did not get many.

It also is not fair to have certain expectations of China. One director at CCAA recalled the discussions in 1996 when the Civil Affairs Ministry re-constructed the China Center of Adoption Affairs. The government positions were established for a workload of 3000 international placements every year. China did not want to be the number one country in term of adoptions. We had to be less than South Korea! We had to be less than Russia! I can remember the discussion in 1997 with CCAA directors when CCAA placed more than South Korea that year. From 3000 to more than 10,000 placement a year, what a leap of faith in the Chinese government! In recent years the demand for Chinese adoption had been up partially because other countries were not doing well. But, China should not be responsible for these countries. China was not supposed to meet all the demand for adoptions, even though it felt proud that families liked our children!

Another director told me that China was the only country who places mostly abandoned children. All other countries place children who have known birth parents or extended families. When China became more industrialized and developed, the adoption may evolve into a system similar to that of other countries. It may take awhile, but it would come. We have good reasons to be optimistic: Just see how other things have changed in China over last ten years! China is a big country and there will be children who need good homes!

To put a footnote on this thought, I did see some changes in the adoption system. In Jiangsu Province, the government is trying to regulate the hospital related domestic adoption practice that is out of government supervision. Some provinces are looking into the possibility of placing real orphans (meaning the government has custody of the child, who has extended families members) in the public facilities for adoption. Most provinces agreed that the children placed into orphanages by police for kidnapping investigations should have the chance to grow in their adoptive homes if no birth families were found after certain period. And, some cities and provinces have been placing real orphans successfully over the years.

If it is a direction we will all take, it is a big challenge to all adoption agencies and prospective adoptive families: Are we ready to adopt children who might be older than we hoped for? What would entail from these “Open International Adoptions?” If we put together a training workshop on this subject, how many families would be interested in just listening?

One CCAA director asked me to pass this promise to our waiting families after a long conversation: for families who sign up now, with a wait that, sure, could be four years in worst scenario. However, if they do not mind waiting(however long or short), they will get assignments. This is [their] promise.

I trust this promise. Still, it does not feel comfortable just to trust something. It will be a very difficult and long adoption process for our waiting families! Four years would feel like life time in adoption work, seeing as 2 years already does! How many times would we have to renew all these documents? How many times we have to look into mirror to tell ourselves that we are not that young anymore? How many families would face some challenges in job, health, etc.? As an adoption agency, what options we could offer to our waiting families? Open some other country programs? As our board discussed before, there were not a lot good ones.

We need to do something. If our families are open to orphan (again; a child with known relatives) adoptions, we will start a training program on this possibility. We have started sponsoring some provinces’ orphan adoption programs and will look into the training on the children and their extended families. There are about half million orphans in the government welfare system now and at least one tenth of them physically residing in the orphanages. Most provinces do not want to open this gate but sooner rather than later this group of children will get attention from the society.

There is also hope that the Jiangsu program would work. If the hospital system could not place children directly into domestic adoptive homes, some children might end up in orphanages. If the American families are willing to make more donations, it sounds like the orphanage directors would be more willing (have greater incentive) to send more of the children’s files to the CCAA to be placed Internationally.

CAWLI will continue to support all families wherever they are in the process and encourage the CCAA as well as the orphanages to work with us to support the children and adoptive families.

Many families have shown interest in the Special Needs/Waiting Child program and we continue to make successful matches through our Special Needs/Waiting Child list from CCAA! Our most recent list had 10 children on it and many have been matched with families or are currently being reviewed. If you are a family who is interested in the Special Needs/Waiting Child program contact your social worker so they can help you to make the best decision for your family. You can also get additionally information by contacting Meg, the In House Social Worker, through e-mail ( info@cawli.orgThis e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it ) or by phone, 1.800.888.9812.
We know it can feel discouraging when there are only a few referrals a month, but we hope that you can all find the support you need during this time and have faith that in the end it will have been worth the wait.

Referral Wait

The wait is about 24 months from log in date. We do realize that the wait time is growing each month. Truthfully, we would predict that the wait time is likely to get longer but, we do not know exactly how much longer it will get.

Our understanding is that the CCAA is doing all that they can to match as many children with families every month. There is no specific information about what the expected wait time is, although we(as an agency) can recognize there is potential at this point for the wait time to be more than 3 years; particularly for those who will be submitting applications. Yet, we can only determine the true/current wait by the referrals we get each month, once we have received them we can figure out how long the next group can expect to wait. We do not get advanced notification of when referrals are coming, the only information that we have is either when they arrive in the office or when the CCAA changes their website. We would again like to stress to all our CAWLI families that as soon as we have valid information from the CCAA or otherwise we pass it along to you. While, we are not walking even a day in your shoes; we are also anxious and feeling stressed while waiting for information and hoping for more. It may not feel like anyone can feel the same way as you while you wait for your child, please know that we are here to support you and experience our own feelings as we work as hard as we can to make your family complete. We want you to know all that we know, as soon as we know it.