Welcome!

Welcome! As many of you know I have had the desire to adopt for a very long time :) This is my first entry and I will try and answer some basic questions that I hear often, starting with “Why did you adopt from China, when so many children need homes here in the U.S.?” To answer this is I am going to post data from research-china.org: "First, how many children are truly available for adoption in the U.S.? An analysis of the U.S. government’s most recent statistics shows the following. In 2003 (the most recent year for which information is available) there were 25,070 children under the age of one year in the foster care program. There was an additional 129,000 children between one year and five years in the program. An important point to keep in mind, however, is that not all of the children in the foster care program are eligible for adoption. The U.S. foster care program serves many purposes, primary of which is child protection. Most of the children (55%) in the program will end up being reunited with their birth parents, an outcome that is preferred. An additional 11% end up living with relatives. In 2003, only 18% ended up being adopted by an unrelated family.Because reunification is a primary goal of the foster care program, States have established set evaluation time frames for birth parents to regain custody of their children. This period prevents young children from being adopted quickly, and therefore very few children under the age of 1 year are available for adoption. Of the 119,000 children available for adoption in 2003, only 3,850 children were under a year old (3%). An additional 38,200 (32%) children between the age of one year and five years were available for adoption, but almost certainly the majority of children were four- or five-year olds. The majority of the children available for adoption were between six and fifteen years of age (58%).Thus, if a family desires to adopt a young infant or toddler, there are few opportunities available in the U.S. foster care program. In fact, the vast majority of adoptable children are in excess of five years old, with the median age being over ten years old.These children need homes, of that there is no doubt. As a single parent, however, the additional needs of these older children raise the question of care if the child needs make it difficult to mainstream them into school. In a perfect world every child, regardless of his or her age, would be adopted into a loving family. In addition, there are serious concerns on the part of adoptive parents when it comes to adopting a child from the foster care program. Several well-publicized cases in which birth parents sued and regained custody of legally adopted children has nurtured a fear that no adoptive family wants realized. Also, many adoptive families are reluctant to take on the emotional scarring that many in the foster care program have experienced. Another factor is the bureaucracy involved with adopting a child from the foster care program." Despite these stats, I did try to adopt domestically at first. Four years ago when I began this journey, I visited the available centers for adoption in Arizona. In Arizona, there is no state run adoption system, but rather, many agencies associated with religious organizations. After making the rounds to the Tucson agencies, I was offered information on their singles group, group meetings and my favorite, come back and see us when you are married. Needless to say, I then began to look into international adoption and felt a strong pull to China given their history for successful adoptions and their one child rule creating many children who need a home. I began compiling all my necessary paperwork in 2006 and finally was DTC (dossier to China) in January of 2007. I then waited for my LID (log in date) which finally came 02-10-07. Everything in China's adoption program is based off of this LID. While I had fully planned on waiting for my LID to be matched with an infant AYAP (as young as possible) current estimates put matching for this LID at the earliest year of 2013. Thankfully, the changing face of adoption in China brought me to the special needs program where I was matched with my beautiful 5 year old daughter.