MAY 2011 CHINA PROGRAM UPDATE

Dear China families:

I have a number of positive developments to report.

First, good news! CCCWA made a bit more progress with matching. As of May 6th, 2011, CCCWA had matched dossiers that were registered through June 20th, 2006. This represents 5 days, and 4 business days worth of matching. Our next group of families waiting for healthy child referrals had dossiers registered on July 24th, 2006, so they are slowly inching ever closer to getting their referrals. CCCWA's dossier review date remains unchanged. CCCWA has reviewed all dossiers submitted through 9/30/2010.

I am also very pleased to report that we sent our next group of three dossiers to China on April 18th, 2011 and they have already been registered with CCCWA and received a registration number on April 29th, 2011!!! Congratulations! All three new families are Hague cases interested in being matched with waiting children. Now that they have a registration number, Becki is free to match them with appropriate referrals when the next shared list is released! Including the 3 dossiers that were just sent in April, Welcome House has sent a total of 10 dossier to China so far in the fiscal year, and three dossiers so far in the calendar year.

There were no placements from China in April 2011 The total number of placements from China for fiscal year 2010-2011 so far is 16, and the total number of placements for the 2011 calendar year is 6.

We have 4 families who have been matched with waiting children who have not had travel yet. Three of these families have received their I-800 approval and NVC letters. Their documents are currently at the US Consulate in Guangzhou for processing and their article 5 letters should be ready this week! This is the last step before the travel approval is issued by CCCWA. We anticipate these next three families will be able to leave for China to meet their children sometime in early June. We have a fourth fourth family who was successfully matched with a little boy from the March 21st, 2011 shared list. This fourth family received their electronic pre-approval through the CCCWA web-site, and they are now just waiting for their letter of confirmation approving the match to arrive at our offices sometime very soon! I am keeping my fingers crossed.

A reminder to everyone. There will not be a separate birth culture awareness event for our China families in process this year. Instead China families are invited to attend our 56th annual International Picnic open to all adoptive families on Sunday, June 12th, 2011 from 1:00 to 3:00 PM. This will be a nice opportunity to connect with other adoptive families and for your child to connect with other adoptees. There are fun games and activities available for both younger and older children. You may register for the picnic on our web-site. We hope to see you there.

Happy Belated Mother's Day to everyone! We will post additional updates soon!