Special Update For Waiting Families Special announcement: visit our Waiting Children page for new updates. The CCAA has finished the review of the adoption application documents registered with our office before April 30, 2009. The CCAA has finished the placement of children for the families whose adoption application documents were registered with our office before April 21, 2006. We have access to the “shared” list of special need children from China. If you are interested in adopting a special need child, please contact us.  We are permanently listing the known rules and restrictions for adopting parents in China. If these do change, we will announce a change, otherwise it will be a permanent fixture on this page. See below.  gabriel@journeysoftheheart.net or (503) 681-3075

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China update for waiting families

Special Note: New Rules Apply To All Adoption Agencies Working In China

Effective May 1, 2007

I. The adopters are a couple of one male and one female with a stable marital relationship. In case that both the husband and wife do not have any ex-marriage, the length of marriage has to reach two years. In case that either the husband or wife has ex-marriages (not more than 2), the length of the current marriage has to reach 5 years.

 II. Both the husband and wife have reached the age of 30 years and are under 50.

For adoption of special needs child, both of them should have reached the age of 30 and are under 55.

III. Both the husband and wife are fully healthy physically and mentally, and do not have the following conditions:

• AIDS
• mental handicap
• infectious disease within infective stage
• binocular blind or binocular parallax or monocular blind and with no ocular prosthesis
• binaural hearing loss or language function loss; adoption of special needs children who have identical conditions will be exempt from this limitation

• non-function or dysfunction of limbs or trunk caused by impairment, incompleteness, numbness or deformation; severe facial deformation
• severe diseases which requires long term treatment and which affect life expectancy, like malignant tumor, lupus erythematosus, nephrosis, epilepsy, and etc.
• post-surgery of major organs transplantation, not yet 10 years
• schizophrenia
• medication for severe mental disorders, like depression, mania, or anxiety neurosis, and etc, stopped not more than 2 years
• BMI (BMI=weight (kg)/ height2 (m2) )> 40

IV. Either the husband or wife holds a stable occupation. The family annual income reaches $10,000 for each family member, including the prospective adoptee and the family net assets value should reach $80,000.

The family annual income does not include welfare income, like relief fund, pension, unemployment insurance, or government subsidy, and etc.

V. Both the husband and wife have received education of or above the level of senior high school, or vocational skills training of the same level.

VI. The number of children in family under the age of 18 years does not reach 5, and the youngest one should have reached the age of 1 year.

Adoption of special needs children will be exempt from the limitation of "the number of children in family under the age of 18 years does not reach 5".

VII. Both the husband and wife have never come under any criminal sanction. And they behave honorably with good moral characters, and abide by regulations and laws. Both of them do not accord with the following situations:

• have a history of domestic violence, sex abuse, abandonment or abuse of children (even if they are not consequently arrested or criminated)
• have a history of taking narcotics like opium, morphine, marijuana, cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine, and etc, and medication for mental diseases, which are able to arouse addiction among human beings
• have a history of alcohol abuse and have given up drinking not more than 10 years ago

Adoption application will be given consideration on a case by case basis when either the husband or the wife has less than 3 criminal records of slight severity with no severe outcomes, and the time for correction of wrong has reached 10 years, or has less than 5 records of traffic law violation with no severe outcomes.

VIII. The adopters are able to have a correct cognition of adoption, and expect to provide a warm family for the orphaned children (or children with handicap and disability) via adoption and to meet the needs of the children adopted for the sake of a good development of them. They have a correct cognition of inter-country adoption as well and are fully mentally-prepared for the potential risks within inter-country-adoption and for the situations of children adopted as potential diseases, developmental delay, post-placement maladjustment, and etc.

IX. The adopters make in the adoption application letter clear promises of being able to accept post-placement follow-ups and offer post-placement reports as required.

X. The fixed number of year or age that appears in this letter shall be dated from the day when the adoption application documents are logged in at the CCAA.