Numbers from France
France made some changes last month that will allow many more of their citizens to adopt internationally. I’ve listed below some selections quoted from an interview with someone from this new agency (I think it’s a new governmental agency).
Once again I’m working with machine translations, if someone who speaks French wants to doublecheck me that would be great.
Select quotes from this translated page and this French page:
These countries seek to develop their internal adoption. China is for example experiencing a fabulous development. It became aware of the richness of her children, therefore it does not seek to increase the international adoption. On the other hand, its concern, it is that the children who leave to it the are best treated possible one. It is thus very concerned of the quality of the files which are addressed to him. The chance for us, it is that it is conscious that the existing certification in France east something of very serious and that then, the AFA will send files goods filled, corresponding to the legal needs for this country.
Select quotes from this translate page and this French page:
So, what I think I’m reading here is that they feel like China is only going to be doing 5,000 adoptions per year, that Spain is currently doing 1,000, and that France feels like the dossiers are competing with each other for placement in China.
But the big thing that jumps out at me is that China says they do not intend to adopt more than 5,000 children out internationally per year. If this is indeed the case, then this explains a LOT about the current wait. Doesn’t it?
U.S. families adopted almost 8,000 children from China last year (State Dept Stats). The current estimate is that China adopted out 13,000 babies last year. If that is now only 5,000 per year then they are adopting almost one third the number that they were. Which makes sense mathematically. It’s now taking them three or more months to get through one month of LID’s.
June 25th, 2006 at 10:42 am
I think we should keep in mind that China is a communist country that likes to “control” information. Not too long ago they were saying that there were 60,000 orphans (or something like that) and several contacts of folks on this board refuted that claim.
My guess is that China doesn’t like the fact that other country’s are aggregating the number of adoptions from all the agencies worldwide and coming up with a number of 13,000 chinese children being placed internationally– that whole saving face thing. To combat these reports, China is stating that they only place 5,000 children through international adoption.
I think that given the number of dossiers China is receiving, that if the 5,000 number were true– they would have implemented quotas already and at the very least would be talking about implementing quotas now.
Another thought– since France only places 500 kids from China the agencies there may not have as strong a connection to China as the larger agencies in some of the other countries were the program is larger– Spain and the U.S, for example. Therefore, information that France gets from Chinese officials may not be as reliable as information provided to some of the other countries who have a greater stake in the program.
I am by far NO EXPERT in any of this, but I am well educated and I have been researching China in general and like all of us, really keeping up with the goings-on. This is very simply my opinion.
I am very interested in what others think.
Calamity4e on yet another rainy Sunday!
June 25th, 2006 at 11:39 am
Hi RQ,
I speak french and i double check your translation which is good. You can just change “One wants to transmit impeccable files.” with “We want to transmit impeccable files” and “It is possible, one wishes it.” with “It is possible, we wish it.”
Iseirinne under a rainy, stormy sunday too…
June 25th, 2006 at 11:47 am
every time I hear things like this it just doesn´t make any sense. because if it´s true that they accept 2,000 files a month and only appoint 5,000 children a year then that would mean that parents with an LID of today would have to wait literally FIVE YEARS!!!!
every time this is the only realisation that keeps me going, namely: that if things are as they are stated above, or if things won’t pick up the wait times will be montreous, and if everything is planned by the chinese it would be very likely that they would have stopped accepting files a year ago
I also have to think about what my agency said when they came back from the ccaa last March. they said China was appointing 13,000 children annually and they were planning on keeping this stable in the next few years, despite the fact of the growing “demand”. as this is the only thing my agency has stated in a year, I guess you can call them conservative, and I tend to believe them.
on the other hand unfortunately, these French numbers make a lot of sense, and it would explain a lot!!!!
and then again, whta are the chinese going to do with all these children? a couple of months ago the prime minister of China said they weren’t going to change the one child policy because China was still growing faster than anticipated.
I am confused
June 25th, 2006 at 12:19 pm
by the way, are those nsn numbers or sn & nsn?
June 25th, 2006 at 2:26 pm
Is it possible that the 5000 number is for IA’s to Europe? And not a total of all countries?
June 25th, 2006 at 2:49 pm
waitingmommy, I don´t think so, because the ccaa appoints babies according to LID´s regardless of the country you´re from. otherwise we would see some LID´s being skipped because the quotum for that particular country would be reached.
and I mean it in the nicest way, but I find it funny how americans, and the rest of the world for that matter, refer to europe as if it were one country. all seperate countries over here have such different personalities. but that is an entire different subject altogether ;o)
but we all have one thing in common: we are desperately waiting for our babies!!!!!
June 25th, 2006 at 3:47 pm
I am french. The reason why so few chinese children are adopdted in France is the french adoption system. Adoption agencies only use volonteer workers and so have limited possibilities to accept families in their adoption programs. They were only 6 lincensed adoptions agencies for China. The problem is the same for all countries France works with. French system ned more agncy (In France, 62% of adoptions are are independant adoption). IT is estimated that more than 20,000 french families are looking to adopt. So the opening of the AFA was awaiting by a lot of people.
The AFA is a completely new thing : it opened in May 2006 and just got licenced by the CCAA. The directors of AFA went to China this spring to get their licence.
The AFA has not started yet to sent dossiers but the first will be sent in a couple of weeks and they already have more than 500 families looking to adopt in China through them (in only one month).
June 25th, 2006 at 4:08 pm
dutchmomtobe Says:
June 25th, 2006 at 12:19 pm
by the way, are those nsn numbers or sn & nsn?
458(real number not 500) is the total numbers sn and nsn adoption of chinese children in France in 2005 (based on the number of visa granted to adopted children to enter France). I think the numbers use by AFA director are for NSN adoption because the AFA is not licensed by the CCAA to place children with special needs.
June 25th, 2006 at 4:42 pm
dutchmomtobe, I wasn’t lumping non-American in the “Europe”. Since France and Spain are European I wondered if the number wasn’t for “Europe”. When I said “all countries” that’s what I meant…everything that wasn’t Europe..America included. I realize it’s made up of several countries, I didn’t feel like typing them all out.
June 25th, 2006 at 5:01 pm
waitingmommy, you don´t have to apologize at all. the minute I posted the comment I regretted it, because I knew it could me interpreted as if I was irritated, which is not the case at all.
but let´s stay focused on the adoption and keep our fingers crossed for things to speed up soooooooooon :o)
June 25th, 2006 at 5:08 pm
Personally, I wouldn’t put much faith in the number France is quoting. To me the interesting part is the realization by the French agency that demand for China Adoption is increasing steadily, and their supposition that they need to make their dossiers ‘better’ than the others. Still, the last sentence about ‘quality bringing the quantity’ seems kind of silly and out of touch with how the China program works. If you meet the requirements, you get in line with everyone else.
So what I gather out of this, and other anecdotal evidence, that China will keep the number of adoptions roughly the same, but be more picky on the requirements of the adoptive parents.
I still think the slowness has more to do with other variables like the Hunan situation, the move, increased demand, and turnover at the CCAA than any conscious effort to cut IA.
June 25th, 2006 at 5:26 pm
Or the ‘5000′ could just be a reporters error - they do happen - a lot!
Just a thought
fu_fairy
June 25th, 2006 at 9:33 pm
The spanish sites that I have been to quote numbers WAY higher than 1000 so I highly doubt that this is a great source in terms of numbers, Spain is second in number of adoptions from China (behind the USA) so that doesn’t make sense at all to me.
June 25th, 2006 at 10:03 pm
I keep reminding myself - the only thing that my agency has been told by China about the wait has been that, “They have received double the amount of dossiers in 2005 than in 2004.” That helps me understand the increase from 6 month wait to 12 months at this point.
June 26th, 2006 at 2:01 am
I am interested in oscar1elmo saying Spain is 2nd to the United States in Chinese adoptions- where do you find these numbers?
I would be really interested in the numbers for the Netherlands as over 75% of the children adopted from my first daughter’s SWI go to the Netherlands. In the last year over 100 children went there from her SWI alone. Iceland seems to be adopting more also. Is there any way to find out numbers for each individual country?
The numbers of people adopting from other countries (other than the USA) must be impacting the wait. Just trying to make sense of all this…
June 26th, 2006 at 8:30 am
Gardenmom, I’m a Dutch-mom-to-be and can help you with a few numbers. China is the most populair country to adopt from nowadays and 3 agencies are working with them. I found the numbers from all adoptions in the Netherlands since 1957 ’till 2004. Here’s the lowdown on China:
2004–> 800
2003–> 567
2002–> 510
2001–> 445
2000–> 457
1999–> 271
1998–> 210
1997–> 105
1996–> 112
1995–> 132
1994–> 75
1993–> 25
1992 –> 26
June 26th, 2006 at 8:37 am
1001 children from China were adopted in Canada in 2004 (423 of which were placed with Quebec families and 358 in Ontario).
June 26th, 2006 at 9:28 am
Countries like Spain have doubled their numbers in the last couple of years and it can happen the same with France, Italy and others.
The official numbers I have got are the following (Total nr of children adopted from China per year and country):
Spain (where I come from):
2004 2389
2003 1043
2002 1427
2001 941
2000 475
Sweden (where I live):
2005 462
2004 497
2003 373
2002 316
2001 220
2000 165
(Unfortunatly I have not found any stadistics including 2005 in the data plublished by the Spanish Goverment)
June 26th, 2006 at 9:43 am
Something about this just doesn’t sound a “Morally” right. Competing for orphans doesn’t sound right. What has this world come to?
June 26th, 2006 at 9:54 am
I was wondering if we can predict in some way how we can expect the increasing number of adoptions in France will become.
If we look at the 2004 numbers in the post above for:
The Netherlands:
adopted children from China: 800
population: aprox. 16 millions
rate: 50 childrens per million inhabitants
Spain:
adopted children from China: 2389
population: aprox. 44 millions
rate: 54 childrens per million inhabitants
Sweden
adopted children from China: 497
population: aprox. 9 millions
rate: 55 childrens per million inhabitants
Should we expect France with 63 million people to increase their aplications for adoption of children from China until at least about 3000 children a year?
June 26th, 2006 at 10:01 am
let’s say that less and less children will have to stay in orphanates when more and more parents are willing to bring them to their families… sound’s good doesn’t it?
June 26th, 2006 at 4:38 pm
Maybe they meant 5000 adoptions OTHER than the 8000 children that were placed in the USA? Signed, the eternal optimist.
June 26th, 2006 at 4:40 pm
I have come to the conclusion that we are all fighting for around 13,000 orphans per year no matter how many orphans are actually in the orphanages. About 10% I’ve “heard” are available for IA.