China Center of Adoption Affairs?

Question

Can someone with experience w/ them tell me about them? Who are they? What is their position in the Adoption Industry?

Answer 1

The China Center of Adoption Affairs is a government agency that oversees all adoptions in China.    When a foreigner (American or otherwise) wishes to adopt a baby from China, they must put together a dossier (homestudy, immigration approval, and other legal documents) and the adoption agency then forwards it to the CCAA.   When it arrives there, it is "logged in," and eventually makes it to the "review room," where the dossier is looked at for accuracy, authenticity, and completeness.  Finally, it goes to the "matching room," where it is matched with the profile of an available child.  

At this time, the matching process is taking 29 months from login date.

Answer 2

They are the agency of the Chinese government that oversees international adoption from China (PRC). Among other things they match children who have been identified for adoption with adoptive parents overseas. For the last couple of years they have been in charge of the "orphanages" (called Social Welfare Institutes) themselves also.

Here's their website:

www.china-ccaa.org/frames/index_unlogi...

(at least I think that is it, it isn't coming up right now)

Ask more if you have more specific questions.

ETA:

As I understand it, they also decide which SWIs can participate in international adoption and give each SWI a maximum number of dossiers they can submit a year. And they set the requirements to adopt from China (they made things quite a bit more restrictive last year).

As part of the Chinese government they are mostly pretty immune to outside pressures, I'd say, though that is changing as the internet and capitalism make China more and more integrated with the rest of the world. For example, despite widespread dismay from pre-adoptive parents, they have been matching fewer and fewer children for international adoption each month. An example of the effect of pressure is that the Hunan scandal broke at all and that they at least appeared to crack down because of it. Brian Stuy's blog has interesting things to say about them.

http://research-china.blogspot.com/