Children's House International

Currently there are 2,114 children listed on the Shared List for special needs children available for adoption in China!  656 are girls and the rest are boys.   China has made a plan to try to help find homes for the children who have been waiting the longest! 

From the CCAA:


In order to improve on our online special needs program and focus on the placement of special needs children who have been on the “shared list” for over two months, CCAA decides to group some of the special needs children as “special focus children” (with a tag of “Special Focus” on their names in the shared list) so that special attention would be drawn to these children by adoption agencies and adoptive families. This will come into effect since September 1. Here are some clarifications on relevant issues:

1.Adoption agencies will be able to search and retrieve information of special focus children through the online system, such as name, gender, age, province and welfare institute where they are from, and pathology categories. Agencies can also enquire children’s information based on their pathology and look for suitable families for them.

2.After locking the file of special focus children, adoptive families have six months to prepare application files and send to CCAA.

3.Adoption agencies may recruit families for special focus children according to families’ needs and the child’s health status. After getting the approval from CCAA, the file of special focus child will be posted on the individual list for the agency, who will be allowed three months to find families.

4.Children who take part in Journey of Hope will all be included in the Special Focus category. Name list of these children will be decided based on discussions between CCAA and adoption agencies, or proposed by agencies and approved by CCAA. Children taking part in Journey of Hope basically come from the same orphanage, sometimes several orphanages as needed. Each session of Journey of Hope includes no more than 40 children. CCAA will post files of these children on the individual list of the agency and allow six months for placement.

5.When the adoptive family is eligible for adoption, they are allowed to adopt two children within one year simultaneously or successively. They may apply to, as situations vary, adopt a healthy child and a special focus child, or a special needs child and a special focus child, or two special focus children, simultaneously or successively.

6.When a family intends to adopt special needs children, especially special focus children, adoption agencies shall convey the true information of the child to adoptive families, help families prepare for the adoption, keep close monitoring on the adoption procedure and provide better post-placement tracking services, so as to protect the interests of adopted children and avoid occurrence of tragedies.

(this child is not available for adoption)

I think this is a positive step to work towards helping the harder to place children find families. It is hard for an Agency to advocate for a child that may be simultaneously advocated for and then placed by another Agency!   CCAA is responding to this and Children's House is expecting a new list of children for us to place! 

How each Agency responds to allowing adoption of non-related children simultaneously will have to be seen.  If you reside in Washington, Utah or Florida and are interested in pursuing adoption from China, give us a call!