Friday, February 27, 2009

Homestudy Update #3

We just had a visit with our homestudy social worker for our third update - our state requires annual updates plus our I-171H immigration approval is due to expire soon and we need to send an update with our renewal. It was a good meeting and it was nice to be able to gently vent about the state of our concurrent adoption attempt and the fact that it's looking more and more like we will be forced into a very difficult decision soon. When we started the concurrent, the timing was such that we would either have a child(ren) at least one year before our China referral as required, or we would know for sure that it would not happen and we would proceed as normal with the China process.

Now because of extreme stalling in the concurrent country and because it looks like we will see a China referral sometime between this fall and next spring, it's looking more and more like we are going to be forced into a very difficult decision.

We must have at least one year between placements. If it comes down to us having to choose, do we go with the process that is a sure thing, just very slow (China) or do we go with the process for which we already have referral (photos and all) but for which it's apparent the home country is trying to discourage adoptions to the US and it may never really happen?

I'm feeling very resentful that we're being backed into this corner and I really hope we get news from the concurrent country in the next week or two - one way or another.

Sunday, February 22, 2009

34 Months LID

We've now been logged in for referral from China for 34 months...that 3 year mark is just around the corner. I spoke with our agency recently and while they believe the next batch of referrals will be small due to the Chinese New Year holiday, they are hopeful that we will see more children referred in the months to follow. I asked them if they have information to support this or if it's just hope...it's just hope. The orphanage donation has been raised for the first time in 15 years and they hope that this will encourage more children to be referred to the international adoption process - while China reports increases in domestic adoption, the general belief is that it has still not increased enough to eliminate the need for international placement.

As for our attempted concurrent adoption, things are not looking great right now.