Adoption Process

Our adoption agency Chinese Children Adoption International has a web site that tells a lot about the process of international adoption from China. You can get a really good understanding just by visiting their web site. We have placed a link on this site to CCAI. International adoption is very complicated and the choice of an agency is crucial. Of course we think our agency is the best...but there are many agencies to choose from and most are very good.

These are some of the steps necessary to adopt from China.

• Adoption Application
• Creating Dossier
• Submitting Dossier to China ( Documents are translated and submitted through your agency)
• China assigns you a Log In Date -LID- (The date all your paper work is logged into the China Center for Adoption Affairs - CCAA)
• Dossier is Reviewed by CCAA
• Dossier moved into the Matching Room

This is where we are now in the process. Our dossier has been reviewed and moved into the Matching Room, where it will sit until they get through all the LID's before ours which is December 9, 2005.

On January 3, 2007 referrals or matches were received by agencies for those families whose Dossier's were logged in at CCAA September 9, 2005 through September 27, 2005. The CCAA sends these out about once a month, approximately every thirty days or so.

Over the past few months it has been taking about about two months of matching to get through one month of LIDs. If this trend continues we have about five more months to wait before we are matched. A lot of factors affect how many days per month they are able to match.

• The orphanages send in Dossiers for the children available each month. The number varies. Children must be declared abandoned through a somewhat lengthy process set up by China to be free to be adopted. Also not all orphanages are set up for international adoption.
• CCAA pulls the Family Dossiers for as many children as they have available that month and then the match process begins.
• Some LID's have a lot of families on the same date, some have only a few, so depending on those numbers and the number of children available that month with completed paperwork they determine how far the next batch of matches will go.

We have done some research and know that the LID months of October and November 2005 are really big months in the numbers of Family Dossiers, so we believe that it could take longer than two months per month for October and November.

We hope that we might see our little one's face for the first time in May or June if all goes well. When you are in the process of international adoption anything can happen so it could be much longer than we expect or the process could be faster than we expect.

Please pray with us for the safety and protection of our daughter until we can bring her home.

Becky