Recent Message from our agency

Today I received this information from Bob at FOI (our adoption agency) for our group of May 19th LID. What does this mean for us...we will have to wait and see. I thought it was interesting to note that when we started the process we believed we would only be waiting 6 or 7 months. Interesting also that Bob mentions that there are more applications than children coming into the system... I pray that things will work out and that Tya will eventually come to our family.
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This message has been sent to the the group of families whose dossiers were sent to China mid-May. One of the families in the group has asked for clarification on expected wait times.

Group Login Dates
Login Dates for the group are May 19 and May 26. Families outside of Ontario share May 19; Ontario families all have a May 26 LID. Depending on how CCAA issues child proposals, the group may be split by LID.


On Wait Times for the May 2005 Logged-in Group
As of today, CCAA has issued child proposals for families with LIDs up to September 5, 2005. These families had waited 15 months for their referrals. The wait time, however, has been steadily increasing over the past year. Over this time, it has been taking CCAA roughly 2+ months to clear one month's worth of LIDs.

The reason the wait times are increasing is primarily because over the past year or so CCAA has been receiving applications from around the world at a rate that is substantially higher than the rate at which children are coming into the system. The increase in the application rate presumably came about because up until last Fall, wait times were in the area of 6 or 7 months and the China program was seen as very attractive. The result is that now there is a large (and still growing) queue of applicant dossiers waiting in CCAA for children to be come available.

If we knew the size and structure of the backlog we could make credible forecasts for future wait-times. This data is not, however, available so all that we have for as a basis for prediction is recent past behaviour. Check-in at www.ChinaAdoptTalk.com for discussions on wait-times. The moderator collects speculations, rumours, and information on anything pertaining to adoption from China and tries to provide analyses. This site is as good as any for estimates on wait-times.

On the Olympics
The Olymics start on 2008/08/08 ("eight" is a lucky number in China). Travel to Beijing in August and early September will be essentially impossible because of hotel unavailability (or at least stratospheric room rates). CCAA is aware that families from countries other than the US must travel to Beijing to acquire entry visas for the child from the country embassy. CCAA is considering how they might handle this in a reasonable fashion -- there is no sense that they will, as rumours have suggested, that they will shut down for an extended period around the Olympics.

Canadian families will likely not be able to travel until say, mid-September. Since there would be a large number of Canadian families from the Canadian agencies held up for the Olympic period, the Canadian Embassy may wish to spread the rush at the embassy into perhaps mid-October.

All-in-all, the Olympics will cause a mild disruption for families expecting child proposals for travel in late Summer of 2008. We all hope that the May 2006 child proposals come in before any possible travel collision with the Olympics.






Bob





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