Understanding the Referral process

Since the referral process has been confusing for some members of my family, I thought I'd create this calendar along with a brief explanation to help everyone understand.

The child match time frame refers to the wait time between our dossier being logged-in at the CCAA (China Center of Adoption Affairs) and the moment we receive our child match from the CCAA. When it is our turn to be matched, the CCAA will match us with a child according to our qualifications and preferences as requested in our dossier. Our child’s photos, translated Physical Examination Report, State of Growth, Background Information, and Immunization record will be sent to us through our international adoption agency - CCAI.

Each month the CCAA looks at the number of paper-ready children that are adoptable and the number of waiting families waiting to adopt them for each LID (Log-In) date and they "match" them based on some unknown magical process until there are theoretically no more babies available. This gives us the "referrals through XX date" that you see every month.

Right now the CCAA has referred through June 2, 2006 and our LID is July 14, 2006. I hope the calendar helps visualize the process. I will try to update this calendar at each referral batch that comes in. As you can see, we have 42 more Log-in dates (which is just calendar days) to go until we're referred our daughter(s).