CHINA PROGRAM UPDATE –
I have wonderful news to report. CCAA just updated their website this morning!! As of May 13th, 2010 dossiers that were registered on or before April 30th, 2009 have been reviewed and families with dossiers registered on or before April 21st, 2006 have been successfully matched with children. CCAA matched 5 days worth of dossiers this month. This is the third month in a row in which CCAA has matched at least 5 days business days worth of dossiers, which is a definite improvement over last year. Both families waited almost 49 months from the registration of their dossier with CCAA to receiving their referral. These are our first healthy child referrals in over a year, other than a Welcome House family of Chinese descent who received an expedited referral in October, 2009.
Heartfelt congratulations to Barbara and to Chuck and Marianne who each just received a referral of a beautiful little girl on May 12th! (Both little girls were just born in November 2009, so were just under 7 months at the time of referral.) Both families waited almost 49 months from the registration of their dossier with CCAA to receiving their referral. Last five months worth of matching is below
Month Match Dates: # business days
April 2010 4/17/06 through 4/21/06 5 days (5 business days)
March 2010 4/11/06 through 4/17/06 6 days (5 business days)
February 2010 4/5/06 through 4/11/06 6 days (4 business days)
January 2010 4/3/06 through 4/5/06 2 days (2 business days)
December 2009 3/31/06 through 4/3/06 3 days (1 business day)
Placements
There was 1 placement of a child from China in April. A big congratulations goes out to Michelle, Jason, and big brother Justin on Gray joining their family. By all reports they had a terrific trip to China and their son has had a very easy initial adjustment. Gray became a US citizen when he touched down at Newark International airport on April 16th, 2010. This was our very first China Hague case, and the family successfully made it through the more complicated process. Both Li and I are making progress in mastering all the procedural steps with a Hague adoption. The total number of placements fiscal year to date for the China program is 14 and the total number of placements calendar year to date is 5.
Pending Travel
We have 5 families who have been matched with waiting children who we anticipate will have placement in the next three months. Three families are non-Hague cases and have already signed and returned their letters of confirmation to CCAA and we anticipate receiving their travel approvals very shortly, by early June at the latest. One of the five families is a Hague case, and we are awaiting their I-800 approval from US CIS and their NVC letter before we can get the US consulate to sign their letter of confirmation and issue the article five letter required in Hague cases. They should also hopefully have travel sometime in June. I am still judging time frames for Hague cases but right now it appears that it is closer to two months from the letter of confirmation arriving at our offices to receiving a travel approval. The fifth family successfully matched with a child just received their pre-approval from the CCAA web site and their letters of confirmation should arrive in May. And with yesterday's great news we now have two more families who have been tentatively matched with children who will be traveling to China within the next 2 months. Altogether we have 7 families in the China program who have been successfully matched with children and are waiting for travel.
Waiting Child Program- More Successful Matches from the Shared list in April
Welcome House is pleased to announce that our waiting child coordinator successfully matched two more Welcome House families with waiting children from the most recent Shared List that was released in April 2010. One of these two families elected not to proceed with their adoption after the 72 hour holding period, but the other family did decide to proceed with their adoption and have already received their pre-approval from the CCAA website.
New Applications and Dossiers submitted
We received 1 application for the China Program in the month of April. The total number of applications FYTD is 13, and the total number of applications CYTD to 6. We sent two dossiers to China in March, bringing the number of dossiers we have submitted to CCAA within the fiscal year to 4 and within the calendar year to 2, but we have five other families who are just in the process of finishing their home studies and we anticipate being able to submit additional dossiers soon. Almost all of the new families for the China program are interested in being matched with a waiting child. (One of the families who just had their dossier logged in with CCAA this month have already been successfully matched with a waiting child!)
Becki has been doing a great job with matching waiting children from the shared list, and I am cautiously optimistic about the trends with the China program over the last several months. Our next group to be matched with healthy children had their dossiers registered on May 19th, 2006... Heres hoping that CCAA keeps up their recent improved pace of matching.
