Special focus child and a little background

So yesterday we inquired about a special focus child. I never expected to inquire about a child because it means the child has more extensive needs, but I saw a child and wanted to know more. She was right around a year old and did not have a right hand. Her birth family abandoned her at 5 days old. Her history said that she was not yet crawling (not at all unusual for orphan care) and had some developmental delays. We were interested to know what type of developmental delays she had. The good news is that the little girl found her forever family last Friday but the bad news is that she is not ours.

In this journey we will not get a referral for a child until we have a LID. LID is the date our dossier is logged in to China. We have to complete our dossier (a long process that I talked about yesterday), complete our fingerprints and have them approved, have our dossier sent to China and then sometime after that we will have a LID. We are hoping to have a 2012 referral, but it could be sometime early next year. We will wait for a child that matches the special needs we feel we could accommodate in our family. Sometimes it happens right after your LID, sometimes it is many months later .  The good news for these children, but the bad news for us, is that waits are getting longer. Waiting families are more willing to take minor special needs so the good news is that there is less of a wait for these children to get to a forever family, but longer waits for families. The bad news is that children with more extensive needs wait a very long time. Once a child has not been matched and has waited for a certain period of time, they become a special focus child. You can request to review the file of a special focus child at any time in the process.

Recent updates

We have a ton going on in our adoption process, but none of it is that exciting.  I am working like mad on our dossier paperwork.  For those unfamiliar with the international adoption process, the dossier is comprised of all of our birth certificates, marriage license, employment verifications, physicals, vaccination records, budgets, passports and several other things that I am forgetting at the moment.  After I get certified copies of these documents, then they have to go back to the secretary of the state they came from and they have to be authenticated.  Then all the docs have to be sent to a US consulate...... oh and they can't be just any US consulate or the same US Consulate.  Each state is in a different US Consulate region, so Ohio docs have to go to one US Consulate, Georgia docs to another, etc.  And every place you send something charges a small fee (generally $15-$20) plus the cost for sending it certified, receipt requested and sending a return envelope, receipt requested.  Plus for the Consulates, you have to pay for a courier because they can't be mailed.  They have to be walked in, in person.  Then after ALL that, they have to be notarized and approved by the state of GA before our agency then approves them, translates them and sends them to China.  It is incredibly overwhelming, but it is what it is and I am trying to work through it all as quickly as possible.  I understand now why they say the dossier process can take up to 4-6 months.  After we get all our docs through this process, then we apply for our 1-800A, which is the application to adopt a child from a Convention Country.  When that is received and processed, we get our invitation to go downtown ATL and be fingerprinted. WOW, did you get all that? I can't believe that it is starting to make sense to me.  :)

The good news though is that we have had all of our home study appointments and our home study has been tentatively approved, pending the receipt of all the required documents that are part of the dossier.

An article about having a second child in China

This article talks about having a second child in China

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20111224/D9RQSRN00.html