Interesting interview

Ok...I am posting someone else's article...is that illegal on a blog? Anyway...don't you wonder how the match us up with our daughters? The organization in China that is responsible is the CCAA. *Chinese Center for Adoption Affairs. Can you imagine...they have thousands of dossier's and thousands of babies in orphanages..and somehow some way the right matches are made....I read this interview by a woman who is an adoptive parent who runs an adoption agency...wanted to share....and boy do I wish I had sent a better passport photo :)

Amy Eldridge's Interview in the Matching Room (2002)

"I have been to the CCAA and will be going there again next month when the Orphan Relief Fund officially launches. I have asked hundreds of questions to them on how things are done. I'll try to answer some that have come up here.1) It (matching) is not random, single file, as in "baby 1 in stack with parent 1 in stack." There are 8 lovely young women in the matching room who DO look at (each family's) condensed info on the computer screen and then look through about 5-6 baby files to see which one is the best fit. You are most definitely MATCHED.It can be from appearance on those passport photos (your dossier photos never make it to the matching room,they are used for review), it can be by hobby (baby who loves music being matched to a woman who loves piano), it can be by meaning of the baby's name (baby whose name means "flower" being matched to a family who runs a nursery), or many other factors.The woman I watched matching said that sometimes she holds a baby's file up to the computer screen and it is just a perfect match for no understandable reason. Sometimes it has to do with age...for instance, if there is an agency group with six families and then six babies, and one parent is 60 while another is 35, they might put the youngest child with the youngest couple. But not always! And that is because another feature might have jumped out to why a match needed to be made.2) Baby files are on one side, color coded by province and orphanage, and parents' files are also color coded by agency. Of course they try to keep agency groups together if possible, so if it is a huge group of families, they will pull an orphanage who sends more children. That is why every so often you will see an agency with 12 referrals from Hunan and one lone referral from Guangdong. They tried to keep them all together, but there weren't enough babies from that orphanage that month.3) Why are some kids not adopted? There is an unwritten quota system in place where only 10,000 children can be adopted internationally each year, and that number is for all countries who do adoptions with China. Each year an orphanage is told how many children to send forward. My own daughter's orphanage was only allowed 9 adoptions a year, but just got the news in February that they can send 36 children this year! How do they pick which ones? How would any of us? Can you imagine making that decision? Most orphanages send the children they think will adapt the best, although we have seen an increasing number of children being referred who have health issues, which leads me to believe that a lot of orphanage directors, now knowing the incredible love and care that these kids receive overseas, are sending children's files on kids they truly care about and want in a home. "