Wednesday, July 30, 2008

Taiwan Fun Fact #1 - Where is Taiwan?

Where is Taiwan?


I knew very little about Taiwan before I started researching adopting there, so I would like to share with my family and friends little bits of fun, useful info about Taiwan while we're waiting. I'm starting with the basics - Where is Taiwan? Take a look at the map above, and you'll see Taiwan in the red box. It is often described as a leaf-shaped island approximately 100 miles off the coast of mainland China. The island (there are actually many smaller islands also apart of Taiwan but which are not usually discussed) itself is slightly larger than the combined land mass of Maryland and Delaware, to put things in perspective.

Tuesday, July 29, 2008

On ASIA's waiting list!!

We are pleased to announce that we are now on ASIA's waiting list! Our official date is yesterday (7/28/08), and we are #6 on the list I found out today. We are excited!! That means there are 5 people ahead of us on ASIA's waiting list, waiting for a spot to open up in Taiwan. There are 3 spots in Taiwan (those are people actively waiting for a referral), so in total there are 8 people ahead of us for our agency (I have NO CLUE how many people there are total). 8 is a lucky number. We are requesting a NSN (non-special needs) infant girl age 0-12 months. My best guess at this point is that it will be perhaps 3-4 years for a referral? I am basing that upon knowing that there has not been a referral since December 2007 (so 7 months and counting), and basically there is nothing to suggest a speed-up anytime soon. We will try to be patient :) So we are done with this portion of the process, so we can mostly kick back and wait now (except that we are still having to work on our adoption education classes). I'll still post occasionally, though. I'm thinking about providing useful information about Taiwan and about adoption issues to my family and friends who will hopefully watch our journey via this blog, so check back often!

Monday, July 28, 2008

Word from Chung Yi

We FINALLY heard from our agency about what Chung Yi is saying in response to the various rumors floating around. Thankfully, there isn't any specifically bad news for us. Unfortunately, however, there really wasn't any good news either. In fact, there was very little news at all. Basically they are saying that the rumors are not true - nothing has changed in their policies or restrictions. So that means that nothing is likely to change anytime soon, either (i.e. referrals will likely continue to be either slow or non-existant). So while I'm glad nothing happened to immediately kick us out of the program, we are still concerned about the overall wait time.
Here is the email we received from our director, for those who are interested:

"As you may know, I returned from Taiwan on July 20th, after traveling with our first Taiwan family to meet their new child. Today I will write you a short note regarding the outcome of my meeting with orphanage Director, Ms. Kao; Assistant Director, Ms. Chuang; Supervisor of Social Work Section, Ms. Kuo; and Social Worker; Ms. Teng. First and foremost, Ms. Kao, the Director, indicated that they wish to continue working with ASIA as our contract stands – that is, working for the placement of both non special needs and special needs children. The wait for non special needs children, particularly infants, is very unpredictable. It is based upon how many infants become available and this greatly fluctuates. While they did not give exact numbers, they made it clear that at this time few non special needs infants are available – the length of wait to referral directly corresponds to the numbers of infants available. They did not share with me how many agencies they work with; however, they did state clearly that some agencies ONLY have contracts to place special needs children, while others, like ASIA, have contracts to place both special and non special needs children. The majority of the children available for adoption is older or are sibling groups. They did not understand why Chung Yi sibling groups were not easily adopted in our country. I explained that we have many sibling groups available in the U.S. for adoption; therefore, some families choose to adopt domestically rather than internationally. I also explained that many families prefer adopting a single, healthy infant. I raised the question again of the appearance that the U.S. is not receiving healthy infants from Chung Yi. Ms. Kao, explained, as she did previously (see ASIA’s May 26th email to Taiwan families) that the Foundation does not try to influence the choice a birth family or guardian makes. Families/guardians make the choice of adoptive family based upon their own desires or subjective assessment of which family will provide the child with the best opportunities and stability. I explained the adoptive families’ frame of reference to help the Foundation leadership understand the emotional and stressful position adoptive families experience during this wait. I told them that I will always communicate confirmed information from Chung Yi to all of ASIA’s Taiwan “families in waiting” via email letter and at the same time. I told them that I will neither rely on nor support rumors – that I will convey to families only what we know directly from the Foundation. ASIA will not support rumors, but we will inquire with Chung Yi to confirm or deny rumors or conflicting information. In my opinion, the Foundation’s leadership appears very devoted to all the children in their care, and they seek the best situation for those children. The Foundation has an obligation to place the children first domestically, then internationally – just as many other countries do. While Taiwan is not a signer on the Hague Convention, Chung Yi does follow most of the same guidelines and a priority to domestic placements is a Hague requirement. ASIA also follows the same Hague Convention requirements when working with Chung Yi. They did not provide me with any changes to current policy. As it stands, when they have changes to policy, they will inform all Foundation contracted agencies with a memorandum outlining those policies. ASIA will forward this information to waiting families as soon as possible. So for the moment, everything stands as it was two weeks ago:• ASIA contracts with Chung Yi Foundation for the placement of both special and non special needs children• The wait to referral for a healthy infant is completely unpredictable. If you choose this path with Chung Yi, I recommend you be prepared to wait several years or more; and if it happens sooner, that’s a beautiful surprise.• The referral wait for a healthy older child (two and older) is likely to be shorter, depending upon how many families are in the queue.• The referral wait for special needs and sibling groups will be the shortest.• The wait after referral to the final court date runs approximately the same for all children being adopted. That is completely dependent upon review of paperwork and availability of court dates.• Chung Yi and ASIA agree to keep the lines of communication open between us. While I wish I could tell you a precise timetable, I cannot. It would be unethical to promise something I know to be otherwise. The good news is that the children from Chung Yi appear very well cared for, loved and are as healthy as any medical condition allows them to be. Their environment is clean and cozy; it’s a lovely country with kind people – the children come from a strong heritage and tradition. And in my opinion, this counts for a lot."

Sunday, July 20, 2008

Homestudy Rough Draft!

We just returned from our yearly Cousin Camp trip (i.e. family reunion), and found an email from our social worker Nancy waiting in my inbox. She sent us the rough draft of our homestudy to appove! Both Chris and I read it thoroughly and made a few minor suggestions. I just emailed the revision back to her, and the next step will be for ASIA to ok it as well. Then we will be able to send off the final draft to ASIA and officially get on their waiting list! Huzzah! I'd been hoping to get on the list before August, and it looks like that will be very doable :)

Wednesday, July 9, 2008

Final visit over!

Our final homestudy visit was this morning, and it went great! Nancy showed up right on time, and we did just a brief walk-through of our house (she didn't look in any closets or open any cupboards or anything). She didn't go into the backyard (viewed it out the windows), so she didn't actually interact with Ginkgo - she just SAW her, so that worked well :) Fortunately it was a nice cool morning so we just opened the windows, ran the attic fan for awhile, and then turned on some fans for while Nancy was here (in case you don't know, our central AC is broken). The topic of AC never came up, so we just didn't mention it and it didn't appear to be an issue. We then sat down in the living room and had a nice Q&A session for a couple hours, then she said she'd hopefully have the rough draft to us sometime next week! Once we approve it she'll send it to ASIA to approve, then she'll send us the final copies. I am definitely hoping we can get everything done this month, and it sure sounds like that'll be a possibility. Once ASIA receives the final draft, we'll get put on the waiting list. Now we just have to hope the waiting list will exist....(still waiting to hear news about Chung Yi and whatever changes they have made to their policies). At any rate, we're relieved that our portion of the homestudy is over! We may go out to eat tonight to celebrate. Probably somewhere Asian...

Tuesday, July 8, 2008

Big day tomorrow

So tomorrow morning at 8:30am, our social worker will be coming to our house for our final homestudy visit! The place is pretty clean, so I think we'll be good there. Ginkgo did pretty well with our recent house guests, so I'm hoping she won't be too hyper when she meets Nancy. We're hoping that she will be able to write up our homestudy report pretty quickly after our meeting - we're still rushing to get on ASIA's waiting list, even if we don't have any idea what is happening with Chung Yi's new rules/regulations yet. We just figure we have to keep pushing forward like normal and just hope everything works out OK.....Wish us luck! :)