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The China Center of Adoption Affairs (CCAA) was established by the Chinese
government on June 24, 1996. An agency within China's Ministry of Civil Affairs, the CCAA is
responsible for the welfare of children in the care of Child Welfare Institutes (orphanages),
domestic adoption, and international adoption.
As of September 30, 2005, China has agreements with the following 16 nations for inter-country
adoption: United States, Canada, United Kingdom, France, Spain, the Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark,
Norway, Sweden, Finland, Iceland, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, and Singapore.
Everything until this point has been so meticulous and detail oriented. Your dossier was review numerous times like a scientist with a microscope. Once, your dossier has been sent to China, you will receive a phone call from our department informing you of such. This date is know as your DTC (Date to China). In reality, this date means nothing in the adoption process. But, it excites parents for them to know things are moving along. We also send a letter stating your DTC. In that envelope will be a list of all the families in your group along with their addresses, phone numbers and email addresses.
Anywhere from 6-8 weeks after your dossier was sent over to China, we will receive a letter here at EAC letting us know that China has officially accepted our dossiers, logged them in and have begun to process them. That will be your LID (Log in Date). This is the date parents love. This will be the date that you track your referral by. The actual date of your LID will more than likely be about 4 weeks after your DTC. By the time it gets back to us, the 6-8 weeks from DTC have passed.
Now what?
Each group of families is assigned a set of color clipboards at EAC. The color means nothing. It just separates you from the rest of the other groups waiting to adopt. Your clipboard goes on the wall and we wait. Many things happen during this wait time. Your dossier moves from the Log-In Department to Translation and Review. Translation and Review is exactly that: CCAA is having your dossier translated and once that is complete, reviewed.
While you are in Translation and Review, we invite parents to call and check the status of the wall. We may have no news but no news is better than bad news and that’s all some moms want to hear. This is where that list we sent with your DTC letter comes in handy. You can contact other parents and share feelings, thoughts, emotions, and experiences with each other. Someone in your group may have adopted before and can help you through the process or may suggest a parent's group online for support. We offer a message board for our clients through our website, www.eaci.com, called Zhou’s Angels. Pictures are posted of recently adopted children, questions are answered and bonds are formed. This is just for the China program.
Each review person has their own assigned agencies. Sometimes one review person has twice as many files to review as someone else does that month, but the next month they may have half as many. This means that one reviewer could be several months ahead of another reviewer.
It is normal for one reviewer to still be working on March while another reviewer has made it to May or June. The review room notice on the CCAA site won't show that a month is complete until all reviewers are through with that particular month.
Your dossier will come out of translation and review and go into the Referral Department. CCAA will review the baby dossiers (they are required to have one just like you did) and make sure there are no issues with them. China only releases so many referrals at a time. They determine this, not us. They are not allowed to issue referrals for a day unless everyone for this day gets a referral. If they are over their "number", that whole date will be held until the next release. We are clueless as to when referrals come and if they will hit your log in date that time around.
While you are waiting for your referral, your fingerprints expiration will be closing in on us. Our department will send you a letter reminding you to refingerprint, get your home study update, and refile your I-600A again. Because there are processing times, we start the process earlier than later so there are no issues when it comes time to go to China. We encourage clients to call with any questions about the letter they receive.
Then, one random day, you’ll get that phone call you waited forever for. We offer to email you the photos immediately. You can come to our office to pick up the hard copies if you live locally or we overnight them to you. A nice sized packet will be overnighted to you either way. This will have all the information about your baby. The most important thing is the acceptance form from China. This document needs to be signed immediately and overnighted back to us. This document is what gets us a travel date, so the sooner the better, right? Once that is sent back to us, we tell you to relax, show off pictures, cry and enjoy each other. We'll worry about that large packet next week…
Next week will come rather quickly. Everyone has sent in their referral acceptance form. These have been sent back to China. Again, we wait. At this time, parents are finishing up the bedroom for baby. Everyone you know is buying "cute" clothes and already giving advice. We are waiting for a travel letter to come from China. Once your referral acceptance goes back to CCAA, they verify it, and issue a travel letter for each family. This travel letter has a code assigned just to your family. We need this code to request your embassy appointment in Guangzhou. Once we get the travel letter, we request the embassy appointment.
Once the embassy appointment is confirmed, we back peddle. We are then able to figure out how many days before that you need to be in "local" (where you pick up your daughter) and how soon before "local" you need to be in China. We pretty much will have this figured out and a tentative itinerary planned. The travel agent will be on alert with tickets on hold. All you will have to do is call her with a credit card number. Mr. Zhou will take care of your hotel reservations. The only other thing to do is file for visas. This information will be in your travel book and your consultant will walk you through that process. Now you are ready to travel.
Depending on where you live, you will fly to the airports we use for travel to China. This could be Chicago, Detroit, NYC, or where ever else the travel agent books. Once you land in China (usually Beijing), Mr. Zhou will meet you and take you to the hotel. You will do some site seeing and shopping.
Then it’s off to "local" to meet your daughter. Usually 5 – 7 days are spent in local. During that time, legal documents for the adoption are being prepared.
China Provinces
After that, you are on your way to Guangzhou for your child’s medical exam and embassy appointment and then, it's home! Mr. Zhou is there to answer any questions and will not leave you stranded in a foreign country.
After your embassy appointment, you will get on the plane and come home with your child. After that, it's an adjustment time for all of you. Your file gets moved to our post placement department and as always, we welcome any calls as silly as you think they might be.
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©2006 EuropeanAdoptionConsultantsInc. |
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EAC Families - Log in
here for
Zhou's Angels.
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The China
Adoption Storybook is filled with the stories, pictures and experiences of others who have adopted
chidren from the beautiful country of China.
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