New CCAA Rules

A few weeks ago the Chinese adoption community was buzzing about a meeting that the China Center of Adoption Affairs had regarding new rules for adoptive parents. The reported details of the meeting were that as of May 1st 2007 China will no longer accept applications to place children with parents who:

• Are Single
• Have been married less than 2 years
• Have a BMI over 40
• Are under 30 or over 50
• Have been divorced more than 2 times
• Have been treated for infectious disease, depression or anxiety
• Have net assets under $80,000
• Do not have at least a high school education
• And a few other random things

Fortunately Jen and I would not be affected by any of the new restrictions and since we have already sent our application to China it is expected that we would be grandfathered in even if we fell into the above restrictions. There are a lot of people though that were hoping to adopt in the coming year and will no longer be able to because of the new rules. Also many couples who have already adopted once from China will now not be able to go back to adopt a mei mei (little sister). The odd thing is that the CCAA has not officially released a statement about these new restrictions. Because nothing official has been released and some of the restrictions are open to interpretation there seems to be some confusion regarding some of the restrictions. Some agencies are posting/reporting the restrictions as fact but the details are being interpreted differently by each agency. We haven't heard anything from our agency about the new rules, which is good. I think they are waiting until something official comes out rather than speculate. This week the media picked up on the new restrictions and there were articles in most of the major papers including this one in the Boston Globe. Hopefully something official will be released soon so we all know for sure what these new restrictions will be.
The next batch of referrals should be coming out soon as well. There were rumors that they would be here before Christmas, another rumor that they would be here after Christmas and yet another rumor that they will not be here until next year. One of the rumors has to be right but s usual nobody has any idea when.

Jen finished up her Christmas shopping a few weeks ago and I as usual haven't started yet. We are planning a low key Christmas this year, we didn't decorate the house or put up a tree. We are just planning to visit with family and save the big celebrations for when we have Grace home. Jen and I did buy each other a special gift for Christmas though, we have a vacation in Jamaica to look forward to in February.