After the dossier is registered in China, about how long until a referral, and how long after this is the trip

Question

After the dossier is registered in China, about how long until a referral, and how long after this is the trip

Answer 1

Oh tough question as this is dependant on the CCAA and how many babies they have registered and processed for international adoption. Assuming you are going the NSN (non special needs) route, currently the parents getting referrals have waitied 18 months for referral. Estimations are that the wait will get up towards 24 months for referral. The length of time between DTC and referral have been as little as 6 months and as great as 19 or 20 months. The new speculation is that the wait will increase even more.

As for how long to travel after receiving your referral it really depends aon a variety of things as well. Chinese holidays usually result in a full week closure of government offices and they seem to have a big holiday once a quarter. Also the size of your travel group and when they can get consulate appointments. Larger agencys will not tell you that your travel time will be dependant on the size of your travel group but it does. If you are trying to get a consulate appointment for 3 families verses 65 families you can get an earlier consulate appointment. The bigger the group the further out they have to look on their calendar to accomodate the larger groups.  Typically, you should be able to travel at the earliest within two weeks of recieving TA. NOTE: I said SHOULD, more frequently than not, you will travel in 1.5 to two months from referral. here is the time line I had three years ago.

DTC Feb 2003

Referral Nov 18 2003

Travel: Feb 2004

My travel groups was 67 families big and we could not get consulate appointments before Chinese New Year that year which was in January. travel costs are outragous then as well. We also had to deal with Christmas on the US side. So we had an unusually long wait for travel due to all of the holidays in the US and China.

Answer 2

You should check with your local adoption agency.  I have a Chinese cousin who my adopted aunt adopted from China and I think it took her like 6 months for a referral and then she had to wait another 6 months for the trip and was over there for 3 weeks.