Statistics

Here are some statistics from my adoption agency in the monthly newsletter:

"In 2007, CCAA placed from 8,500 to 9,000 Chinese children with families in 16 countries. This number includes waiting children (children with special needs or older kids). Before May 1, 2007, CCAA received from 1,500 to 2,000 dossiers per month. After May, number of dossiers sent to the CCAA keeps decrease from 500 to 300 a month. Due to the long wait, CCAA receive dossier withdraw requests from families worldwide on a daily basis averaging 120 per month."

I left the grammar as is. Our agency president is Chinese and speaks English as a second language and this was in her letter.

The decrease in dossiers is good news for us. It means that once they finish with the dossiers from before May 2007 (when the requirements for adoptive parents were changed and more restrictions were added), the dossier load will decrease and perhaps the waiting times will, too. It will likely be another year and a half before they send referrals out for May 2007 dossiers, though, so I don't expect to see any decrease in wait times until summer 2009 at the earliest....and since the wait is still increasing, it may be that the May 2007 folks don't get processed until late summer or fall 2009. We are hoping to get our referral in early to mid 2010. of course, this is all speculation, but it does help to see that the dossier load went down after May of last year as we suspected and at some point maybe wait times will decrease instead of increasing each month indefinitely. And it looks like some folks are withdrawing requests every month because the wait is just becoming too long for them.