What happens with our Dossier?

Each week we get an update from our adoption agency, Christian World Adoption. This week Virginia explained the process that we are in right now. She also explained why the wait to get Mari is taking so long. Here is the information that we received. CWA has been excellent to work with. They are always very upfront and honest and the doors of communication are always open. We would recommend them! I hope you are enjoying reading about our journey!

CWA mails the dossiers to the China Center of Adoption Affairs (CCAA). When a dossier arrives at the CCAA, the worker enters the family's information into the CCAA computer system. The date on which this happens becomes the family's LOG-IN date. The CCAA receives hundreds of dossiers every week, so it may take 3-4 weeks for them to log-in a dossier after it is received. (CWA will let you know what your log-in date is.)

All of the dossiers with that log-in date are kept together in a group. The group of dossiers moves from department to department over a period of many months. First the dossiers are translated, then they are reviewed, and then they are moved to the matching room where they will wait until the CCAA is ready to make a referral.

The "referral" includes 2-3 photos of the child, medical information about the child, and a brief developmental report. Most of the information is in both Chinese and English. The CCAA makes referrals according to the log-in dates on the dossiers,taking them in chronological order. To date, they have made referrals for families with log-in dates through October 24, 2005. Back in the"good old days" the CCAA used to mail referrals covering the log-in dates for an entire month at a time. Now they are only able to send referrals covering periods of one or two weeks.

So why is the process so slow? The process is exceptionally slow right now because adoption from China became SO popular that the CCAA received many, many more dossiers than they have children available. They are moving as quickly as they can to get through the backlog, but they have THOUSANDS of dossiers waiting and there are only so many children in the international adoption program. So we need to expect that the process will continue to be very slow for several more months. It is most likely that the wait will get worse before it gets better.

I hope this finds you all having a great Monday. We went to San Antonio over the weekend and went to the Riverwalk. It was great seeing my sister and nieces! Greg's vacation ends tomorrow. What a bummer. It was so nice having him home even though we missed our cruise! Love, Alicia