For people who happen upon my blog and are interested in adopting from China themselves, or friends and family who are just curious as to the steps we have gone through on our road to bring Lauren home, this post should explain quite alot. My apologies if I've left any info out; to be honest I'm just so relieved that the paper chase portion is over with I may have "blocked out" parts of the process. So settle in, grab a coffee (or a stiffer beverage) and here goes.
The Paper Chase
1) Contact an approved Home Study Adoption Practioner that is licensed through the Ministry of Community and Social Services.
The Home Study portion consists of approximately 5 meetings. In our case all meetings were conducted in our home with the children present. There are several aspects to the Home Study including: Financial Letters from employers, a Net Worth Statement, a Financial Statement, Police Clearance Letters, Marriage Certificates, Birth Certificates, Divorce Certificates, Home Safety Report, a completed medical exam and letter from your family physician, Personal Letters of Reference, and an extensive questionaire on your health, marriage, childhood etc.
2) The result of the Homestudy being completed is (hopefully) a recommendation from the Adoption Practioner to the Ministry of Community and Social Services for a Letter of Approval to adopt. This basically indicates that the Province has approved you to adopt. This does not indicate that China approves you to adopt.
3) Obtain an Interpol Clearance Letter stating that you have no prior crimminal record.
4) Have your family physician complete a CCAA (China Center for Adoption Affairs) Medical Clearance Letter
5) Complete another Financial Statement as provided by the CCAA.
6) In our particular case, we qualify to have our file expedited due to Chinese ancestry, and needed to provide Birth Certificates or Citizenship papers stating the place of birth of my husbands parents.
7) Obtain or renew passports.
8) Collect a variety of photos that clearly represent: the family home, all family members, individual photos of my husband and myself, and photos of the day to day life in our home.
Once the documents are compiled, photocopied in triplicate, and submitted to your Adoption Agency the next stage begins.....
Waiting
1) Your local Agency will have the originals of the documents notorized, and upon receiving the Letter of Approval from the Ministry, will send the completed package (now known as a Dossier) to the CCAA. This is officially known as DTC (Dossier to China).
2) Once there, the Dossier is translated to Mandarin and offically logged-in to the system. you will receive from your Agency a LID (log in date). It is from this date that you officially begin counting the months until you will receive a referral of a child.
3) Timelines are always a "hot topic" and open to change and much speculation. Because we are expedited we can expect to wait approx. 14-15 months until Referral. The wait times for the non-expedited program are currently between 3-4 years.
The Referral
1) The referral occurs when a child is "matched" to a family. There is no choice on the part of the adopting parents and the matching is done in China at the CCAA . New parents will receive a photo of the child, and basic info such as where the child is residing, age (often estimated), the health of the child etc. As the majority of children in China are abandonned there is no family background or health information available.
2) Your referral must be shown to your Home Study Adoption Practioner and it is often a good idea to review the photo and info with your Family Practioner before acceptiing the Referral.
3) Once you accept the Referral, a letter will be prepared by the Adoption Agency indicting your acceptance.
4) Travel to receive the child occurs approximately 6 - 8 weeks after receiving the Referral.
Travel to China
1) Travel to China for 10 - 14 days is mandatory. For families travelling from Canada, you typically fly into Bejing, and with a short layover, fly directly to your child's province of residence. You remain in the province for the 1st week and then return to Bejing for the 2nd week to finalize the process.
2) Immigration policies have recently changed to make becoming a Canadian Citizen easier. It is my understanding (as we are not that far in the process yet) that the child will automatically become a Canadian Citizen upon landing on Canadian soil.
Follow Up
1) Two Post Placements Reports must be completed by your Adoption Practitioner at 6 months and 12 months. These are a mandatory requirement of the CCAA.
Whew......hopefully I haven't lost anyone.....and you are still awake!!
15 hours of being interviewed......
300 sheets of photocopied documents........
$25,000.00 ..................
bringing Lauren Jade home...........PRICELESS!!!
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