Dear China Families,
I hope everyone had a nice Thanksgiving Holiday with their family and friends.
As most of you know by now, I assumed responsibility for the China program on
November 1st, 2009, though I am still getting up to speed on protocols and
procedures. Bear with me. Most of you probably read my China update for the
Welcome House newsletter for October, but I realize that I did not also post to
the Yahoo group this month. Sorry about that!! Posting to the China yahoo
group fell through the cracks during the transition of responsibilities. But I
will be posting to this group regularly going forward. We will try to get
program update information to the families in process in our China program
first.
We have lots of good news to share with everyone.
First, CCAA has made some progress on matching. We just heard today that
families with dossiers registered on or before March 31st, 2006 have now been
matched with children, that is three business days worth of dossiers, which is
progress. Our next WH group to be matched had their dossiers registered on April
19th, 2006. Hang in there, you are getting closer, slowly but surely. Also
CCAA has reviewed dossiers submitted up through 2/29/2008. There has been
substantial progress in the number of dossiers that CCAA has reviewed.
We also had 3 placements of children from China in November. On November 5th,
2009, all three little girls touched down in the United States, and became US
citizens. Congratulations to Laurie and Paul and big sis,Hanna; Janis and Bill
and big sis,Ella; and Elliot and Lynda who are first timers. All three girls
are doing great. That brings the total number of placements for the WH China
program this calendar year to 13. We also have four more families who will
leave for China to meet their children very shortly. All four families received
confirmation of their adoption from CCAA, and we are just waiting for travel
approvals to arrive for three of the families before we can finalize their
travel arrangements. Three of the four families have accepted a referral of a
waiting child, and one family has a parent of Chinese heritage who are eligible
for an expedited referral.
The waiting child program continues to be a bright spot for Welcome House. In
fact waiting children account for the majority of children placed from China in
2009. WH received eight designated waiting child referrals just for our agency
in August, and six designated waiting child referrals for our agency in
September. 2 of the 8 August referrals and 3 of the 6 September referrals have
been matched with WH families. We also got clarifying information on a number
of the waiting children, that was favorable. Li asked a number of follow up
questions and got additional helpful medical information and even got an
additional medical test performed. We are running out of time to match children
from the August group, so please let me know if you are interested in receiving
more information. If you thing you might be interested in adopting a waiting
child, please contact Becki Buck at bbuck@.... Becki has been doing
a terrific job coordinating the waiting child program for WH.
Also we are instituting a waiting child of the month program to highlight some
of the children referred to us that are patiently waiting for a family. Our
waiting child for this month is a very sweet eleven year old girl who we are
calling Annie, who actually resides in the orphanage in Zhenjiang. This is the
province where Pearl S. Buck was born and a number of WH families sponsor
children from this orphanage so we feel a particular obligation to find a home
for Annie. I have posted a flyer which Becki Buck created to the files section
of this group, which details Annie's special needs. She has received all
required corrective surgeries in China and functions normally.
Also, the shared list of waiting children was just released the last week of
November. These are the waiting children that are released to all agencies
simultaneously. There were many healthy older children and a lot of boys on
the shared list this month. There were also children with more involved special
needs on the list. Please let me know if you are interested in the Waiting
Child program and I can put you in touch with Becki.
Don't hesitate to contact me with any questions and concerns. I am looking
forward to getting to know all of you better over the coming months. My work
e-mail address is adurie@... and my phone number is (215) 249-0100
ext. 119.
Amy
